One ball after another, serves from Austin Matautia were mishandled, shanked to the side or fell to the court before being reached by a player.

Moanalua’s senior outside hitter is known to produce points with his kills. But on Tuesday, his 13 service aces accounted for the bulk of the offense in a 25-15, 25-5 win over Castle in an OIA East volleyball match.

Second-ranked Moanalua (1-0) finished with 18 aces against Castle (0-1), last year’s OIA Division II champion. Matautia’s jump serve yielded 12 aces during a run that turned a 2-1 margin into a 17-1 lead in Set 2. Four consecutive aces made it 7-1. Even a timeout and substitution didn’t stop his serves from picking apart Castle’s passers.

“In the beginning of the game, I was trying too hard,” Matautia said. “I just thought I had to warm up into it, so I went back to what I was taught.”

Seven consecutive aces extended the lead to 17-1. A kill from Castle’s Ethan Mann finally stopped the run produced by the University of Hawaii commit.

“It’s hard to read because it curves,” said Castle’s Jack Andrade, a 6-7 hitter who was on serve-receive during Matautia’s run.

The second set was a stark contrast from the opening set, in which Moanalua scored points in bunches and then gave them away on errors. Castle closed to 20-15 before Moanalua scored the final five points — three coming off aces from Nalu Demello.

Demello finished the match with four aces and led the team with five kills. Zachary Kagehiro finished with seven assists and Zackary Miyamoto had six assists for Moanalua.

“He’s one of those players, the first set he was all over the place and when he finally got ahold of his serve, it started to do some big-time damage,” Moanalua coach Alan Cabanting said of Matautia. “That’s another thing we’re trying to work on. Once we start the game, it doesn’t take us long to really get into it.”

Na Menehune, which has won the past five OIA Division I titles, lost two starting hitters and a libero from last year’s squad.

But Moanalua still has an experienced senior class looking to finally make the state championship match. Moanalua has lost in the last five state semifinals.

“We still have that core group of players that are the class of 2016,” Matautia said. “Our team is still pretty strong. I’m pretty excited.”

The Knights also want to continue their championship run from last year. The loss showed areas they need to focus on.

“It lets us know what we’re capable of and how much we need to work on,” Andrade said. “I’m willing to put in the effort and so is my team.”