The last NCAA national championship team banner that was hung in the Stan Sheriff Center rafters was quietly removed under the taint of the association’s sanctions more than 16 years ago.

That was in September 2003, when the NCAA ordered the University of Hawaii to vacate its 2002 men’s volleyball national championship due to the use of a player rendered ineligible for having played against pros, leaving the 1987 women’s volleyball championship as the third and last NCAA national title won by the school.

(UH won an AIAW women’s volleyball crown in 1979, before the advent of the NCAA women’s title. And the school captured a 2001 women’s and a 2004 coed Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association title, competitions in which the NCAA does not hold championships.)

So the Rainbow Warriors opening their 2020 men’s volleyball season as the No. 1-ranked team for the first time against Charleston tonight at the Sheriff Center fosters hope that it can be the first step on the five-month-long path toward a long-awaited NCAA title breakthrough.

It marks UH’s first appearance at No. 1 in the preseason since the American Volleyball Coaches Association introduced a preseason edition in 2007.

That the Rainbows return several key members from last year’s 28-3 national runner-up squad, including Rado Parapunov, Gage Worsley, Patrick Gasman and Colton Cowell, made UH the compelling pick in the AVCA poll and the unanimous pick in the powerful Big West Conference, which has four other nationally ranked teams.

But as the Rainbows learned in 2018, when they were not extended a berth in the NCAA championships, there are few guarantees come tournament selection time.

The pain of that snub helped fuel UH’s drive to the championship game last year, a mission it embraced early on and was unrelenting in pressing on over the course of the remarkable, record-setting season.

And there is much to be done between now and April 23, when the Big West tournament, held in front of a deafening, full house of UH partisans at the Sheriff Center in 2019, will move to to the home floor of eighth-ranked UC Irvine. To the winner goes the automatic berth to the NCAA tournament in May at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Whether the Big West will command two berths as it did last year when defending national champion and NCAA tournament host Long Beach State got an at-large bid after losing to UH in the Big West final, remains to be seen.

In the meantime, the Rainbows currently stack up as UH’s best shot at ending the NCAA championship drought.

The beach volleyball and water polo teams have knocked on the door in recent seasons. Each finished fifth nationally in 2019, the highest among teams from non-Power Five conferences. They are among the very few sports in UH’s 21-team lineup where a school outside of the well-heeled Power Five conferences can still reasonably aspire to winning an NCAA national championship.

This is particularly true in men’s volleyball, where Division I scholarship limits (4.5 scholarships per team compared to 12 for women’s volleyball) do not allow Power Five schools to corner the market on talent. It is a major reason why non-Power Five teams have managed to win six of the past 10 titles.

Now we wait to see if last year’s unfulfilled quest for the national title will help drive Hawaii to a championship breakthrough for the school after 32 years.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.