The road to Fairfax, Va., begins on the 101 this week for the Hawaii men’s volleyball team seeking to reach next May’s NCAA tournament hosted by George Mason. The Rainbow Warriors open their fall schedule Wednesday at UC Santa Barbara, the first of six matches over four days in California that includes stops at Cal State Northridge, UC Irvine and Long Beach State.

With the exception of UC San Diego, defending conference tournament champion Hawaii sees all of its Big West opponents and in places the Warrior sophomores and freshmen have never played. Add that UC Irvine will be hosting the conference tournament in April and “it’s good for us to get in there for all the guys to see what those gyms look like,” Warrior coach Charlie Wade said.

“We don’t have a lot of questions because we return a lot of starters and guys who have been in the program a while. This will give a chance to see what the depth chart really looks like.”

Hawaii returns four starters from the 28-3 squad that set a program record for wins and a national record for consecutive sets won en route to finishing as the NCAA runner-up. Back for the Warriors are three All-Americans: senior opposite Rado Parapunov, senior middle Patrick Gasman and junior libero Gage Worsley. Also returning is senior hitter Colton Cowell, who was named to the NCAA all-tournament team, along with Parapunov and graduated All-American senior setter Joe Worsley.

Also gone to graduation is All-American hitter Stijn van Tilburg, just the third Warrior to earn three first-team All-America awards. He was second in kills (3.82 per set), was No. 2 nationally in hitting percentage (.457) and ranks No. 7 on UH’s career kill list (1,410).

Battling to replace Joe Worsley at setter is sophomore Jakob Thelle and junior Jackson Van Eekeren. Potentially filling the void left by the graduation of middle Dalton Sobrig are 6-foot-7 Brazilian freshman Guilherme Voss and 6-6 Dimitrios Mouchlias from Greece.

Voss and Mouchlias are two of the Warriors’ six true freshmen on the 21-player roster. Hawaii also has five redshirt freshmen.

Senior hitter James Anastassiades saw the most significant playing time of the returning reserve attackers. Also back are redshirt sophomore middle Max Rosenfeld and sophomore hitter Filip Humler.

The Warriors, who left today, open with split-squad morning matches at UC Santa Barbara followed by a regular match at 3 p.m. Hawaii time. Hawaii is at UC Irvine on Thursday (4 p.m. HST) and CSUN on Friday (12:15 p.m. HST).

On Saturday, the Warriors face defending NCAA champion Long Beach State (7 a.m. HST) and USC (8:45 a.m.) at the Pyramid. Hawaii and The Beach have a rematch in LBSU’s Gold Mine auxiliary facility (noon HST).

The Warriors’ alternating home-and-home Big West schedule will have UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara and Long Beach State for two matches at the Stan Sheriff Center next year. Hawaii is on the road for two matches apiece at CSUN and UC San Diego.