No. 1 Hawaii enjoyed a night of happy returns in Northern California.

With All-America setter Jakob Thelle back in the lineup after a three-match absence, the Rainbow Warriors emerged from a bye week with a sweep of No. 8 Stanford on Friday in Stanford, Calif.

Thelle remained on campus during the Warriors’ road trip to North Carolina to rest a sore knee two weeks ago. Coming off the additional time offf, the senior ran an efficient UH attack that hit .440 in the 25-22, 25-19, 26-24 victory and punctuated the evening in Maples Pavilion with his second ace of the match.

“Obviously he impacts the game in a lot of different ways and he’s a leader on our team,” UH coach Charlie Wade said. “We get better when he just walks in the door.”

UH opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias led the the Warriors (8-0) with 12 kills on 23 attacks to hit .391 and outside hitter Spyros Chakas added 11 kills on .375 hitting. Middle blocker Guilherme Voss was in on five of UH’s eight blocks and had six kills on seven swings.

Thelle finished with 32 assists, two kills and two aces and UH ran its winning streaks to 17 consecutive matches and 21 straight sets dating back to Jan. 13.

“A couple days ago we started getting the connection back and it took about 20 minutes and we were back and running,” Voss said of Thelle’s return to practice.

Will Rottman, an All-America outside hitter last season, led Stanford (7-3) with 13 kills on 27 attacks to hit .222. Freshman opposite Theo Snoey finished with nine kills on .313 hitting and three aces.

The Warriors and Cardinals will change venues to close their series today in 1,000-seat Burnham Pavilion.

While the Warriors set a season-high hitting percentage and finished with a season-low seven attack errors on Friday, Wade said he did detect some hints of rust and “our serving was a bit neurotic” in a performance that produced five aces against 15 errors.

“It looked like the first unit hadn’t played together in that kind of environment for a while, and they hadn’t,” said Wade, who freely shuffled the lineups for UH’s three sweeps on its North Carolina trip two weeks ago. “So it’s nice to get a win when you’re not really firing on all cylinders.

“We had a decent night blocking and we had a poor night serving. If we put the ball in play more we’ll have more blocking opportunities. We’ll continue to work on both those things and hopefully imporve as a season goes on.”

The Warriors entered Friday’s match averaging 1.76 blocks per set, but put down three in the first eight points of the match and had five in the first set.

“Our assistant coach did a very good job letting us know what their tendencies were and giving us a general game plan to follow,” said Voss, who also served up an ace. “And just having that one guy you really want to shut down is motivation enough to go out and get blocks.”

Snoey had four kills to help Stanford battle back to build an 18-15 lead in the first set. The Warriors responded with a 6-1 run that included aces from Thelle and Chakas and capped by a block by Voss and Mouchlias.

A Mouchlias serve that was initially ruled wide was reversed after a challenge by Wade for. The ace gave the Warriors set point and a Stanford service error two points later ended the set.

UH hit .696 with 16 kills on 23 attempts without an error in the second set. The Warriors ended the set on a 4-0 run capped by a block of Rottman by Mouchlias and Cole Hogland.

UH erased a four-point deficit in the third set and with the score even at 22-22, Thelle took a swing that was ruled to have gone into the net. Wade challenged and the officials again overturned the call, ruling the ball had touched a Stanford blocker. The point was replayed and Chakas put away back-to-back kills to give UH match point. Stanford survived to force deuce but Thelle fed Voss in the middle to give UH another match point and this time ended UH’s sxith straight sweep with the 103rd ace of his career.