Hawaii enters another year in a now familiar perch.
Heading into 2023 as two-time defending national champions, the Rainbow Warriors begin another title defense next week as the clear favorite in the NVA/AVCA Preseason Men’s Division I-II Coaches Poll released Tuesday.
UH received 21 of 22 first-place votes to top the voting among the national panel of coaches and will enter the season at No. 1 for the third time in the past four years.
The Warriors accounted for 328 points in the poll, 33 points ahead of No. 2 UCLA, which received the remaining first-place vote.
Four of the Big West Conference’s six teams appear in the top eight of the AVCA poll and Hawaii will face each of the next eight teams in the poll at least once in the regular season.
“When you’re two-time national champion it increases every year,” UH outside hitter Spyros Chakas said during the team’s photo day last month in reference to the target on the program.
“I think this year with our tough schedule, there’s going to be a lot of teams that are going to put pressure on us. But I think we’ve learned how to handle it and we’re going to enjoy it.”
Long Beach State, which fell to UH in last year’s Big West and NCAA Tournament finals, placed third in the voting, with Penn State and Pepperdine rounding out the Top 5. UH opens the season against No. 6 Ball State in a two-match series on Jan. 12 and 13 at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
Big West members UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine placed seventh and eighth in the poll, followed by Stanford and USC.
Chakas, an AVCA second-team All-American and Most Outstanding Player of last year’s National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship, is part of a starting lineup that returns intact following last year’s 27-5 season.
Also back are first-team All-America setter Jakob Thelle, opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias, outside hitter Chaz Galloway, middle blockers Guilherme Voss and Cole Hogland and libero Brett Sheward.
UH also led the Big West’s preseason coaches poll released in December and Chakas, Thelle and Mouchlias were voted to the preseason all-conference team.
“The excitement and anticipation is still there,” Thelle said on photo day. “We all had the same goal after we won the last one. We knew we were going to have a lot of guys returning, so we might as well go for the third one.
“But we know there’s a lot of anticipation, there’s some pressure, but we just embrace that pressure as well and keep working even harder and get better so we can compete at a high level and be consistent from the beginning.”
Season tickets are on sale at etickethawaii.com or at the SimpliFi Arena ticket office. Single-match tickets go on sale on Thursday.
UH VS. THE NATION
No. 1 Hawaii will take on the No. 2 through 9 teams in the NVA/AVCA Men’s Division I Coaches Poll during the regular season.
Rk. Team vs. UH
1. Hawaii (21 first-place votes)
2. UCLA (1 first-place vote) 3/11 (H)
3. Long Beach State 3/17-18 (H)
4. Penn State 3/10 (H)
5. Pepperdine 3/1, 3 (H)
6. Ball State 1/12-13 (H)
7. UC Santa Barbara 3/31, 4/1 (A)
8. UC Irvine 4/7-8 (H)
9. Stanford 2/10-11 (A)
10. Southern Cal
11. Grand Canyon
12. Loyola-Chicago
13. Ohio State
14. Lewis
15. Princeton
Others reeiving votes: NJIT 22, BYU 12, Cal State Northridge 9, UC San Diego 8, Purdue Fort Wayne 2.
