IRVINE, Calif. >> One day after being named the nation’s top-ranked collegiate men’s volleyball team, and three nights after a significant victory over Brigham Young, Hawaii struggled early against a squad with a losing record.

Nevertheless, the Rainbow Warriors overcame a ragged first set to sweep Concordia 25-20, 25-16, 25-16 on Tuesday night at the CU Arena.

UH (21-0) extended its NCAA record of consecutive victorious sets to 63 at the expense of the Eagles (12-16), the last-place team in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.

“We know what our standard is, and we were a little below that to start the match,” UH coach Charlie Wade said. “It’s not that we were horrible. But coming off Saturday night — a big, emotional win — it looked different, sounded different and smelled different.”

Junior opposite Rado Parapunov, who had a match-high 15 kills, was more blunt.

“We shouldn’t have underestimated them,” he said. “They have amazingly good players.”

One of those players, Punalu’u native Addison Enriques, leads the MPSF with 185 digs and a 2.10 average per set, good for 19th place nationally. The Kamehameha-Hawaii graduate was aced once in 27 serve receptions.

“The first thing off the bat was their serve-receive,” Hawaii senior setter Joe Worsley said. “We noticed that immediately. They’re one of the best in the MPSF and they were passing really well. When a team does that, it makes it a little more difficult to defend because they have all their options.”

One of those options was the back row, where Jordan Hoppe generated most of his team-high 11 kills off the 3-meter attack.

“We haven’t really seen a team in the past few weeks that sets the back row that many times,” Worsley said. “That’ll definitely be a focus for our coaches, making sure in practice that we’re working on defending that going forward.”

As a result, the teams exchanged the lead three times in the first set and forced nine ties, with the final one at 9-9. The Warriors used a 3-0 spurt to move ahead 12-9. Senior hitter Stijn van Tilburg broke the tie with a back-row kill, then reserve freshman setter Jakob Thelle served an ace and Parapunov smashed a kill off a block from the right side.

Concordia narrowed the deficit to 14-13, but another 3-0 spurt enabled UH to extend its lead to 17-13. The Eagles hung around until 22-19, when the Warriors closed it out on a 3-1 run with two kills by Worsley and one from senior middle Dalton Solbrig.

Despite losing Set 1, the Eagles still hit .333. The Warriors, tops in the country in opponent hitting percentage (.185), were not amused.

“We went, ‘Come on, guys, we’re better than this,’ ” Parapunov said.

Parapunov’s teammates responded. In the second and third sets combined, Concordia committed 13 errors and hit .098.

“Going into the second and third (sets) we just talked about continuing our service pressure,” Worsley said. “We had a better idea of who they wanted to set in certain situations, and we were able to dial in on that.”

After two blocks in the first set, the Warriors — the country’s top blocking team (2.80 per set) — had 9.5 the rest of the night in out-blocking Concordia 11.5-1. Gasman finished with a match-high eight blocks, seven assists and his lone solo stuff ending the match after 91 minutes.

“It’s a combination of having some good turns on the service line and just getting the timing on the block, where we’re touching some balls,” Wade said about his team’s recovery. “We actually got some blocks, but most importantly, we were able to get some nice touches and slow them down.”

In the second set, UH held a 9-8 lead before embarking on a 6-1 surge to extend the advantage to 15-9. Parapunov contributed a block assist and a cross-court kill in that span. Concordia drew within 15-12, but the Warriors then used a 5-1 blitz to build a 20-13 lead.

UH took a 4-0 lead in the third set before the Eagles closed to 10-9. But Parapunov pounded three kills and assisted on two blocks during a 7-2 spree that put the visitors ahead 17-11. Parapunov finished with 15 kills, five block assists, a solo block and an ace.

Van Tilburg finished with 12 kills, hitting .524, his lone error coming midway through Set 1. Joe Worsley had 29 assists, sophomore libero Gage Worsley, No. 2 in digs nationally (2.72), finished with seven digs and was perfect on 29 serve receptions. Senior hitter Brett Rosenmeier, in his second start of the season, had a team-high eight digs.

“We knew it would be a challenge,” Wade said. “You’re playing a good team on the road in a nonconference match late in the season. For our own standard, we weren’t our best. But we got it back. The guys responded, and as the match went on, we got really dialed in. It was good to see.”

Hawaii hit .449, off its national-best .481. The NCAA record is .375, set by Long Beach State last season.