The thrill of winning an epic, five-set, potential national championship preview was one point away for No. 3 Hawaii when 6,923 people inside the SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center went dead silent.
The biggest roar on a night filled with them was replaced by what felt like a moment of silence as Hawaii senior outside Spyros Chakas fell to the teraflex clutching his left knee.
Chakas was eventually carried off the floor by his teammates, who then finished off a 23-25, 25-19, 25-22, 17-25, 15-13 victory over No. 5 UC Irvine to win the Outrigger Invitational on a Guilherme Voss kill on UH’s fourth match point.
Hawaii (17-1) secured its 16th straight win and stated its case to earn the No. 1 ranking in the new AVCA rankings out today. Instead, the concern shifted to Chakas, a two-time, second-team All-American and the unquestioned leader of this year’s team.
“Obviously, we’ve got our fingers crossed hoping Spyros is OK,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said. “That’s just part of competitive athletics. I hope he’s great, but we will find out more here in the next 24 hours.”
Chakas was named the tournament’s most outstanding player and joined on the all-tournament team by Voss and Alaka’i Todd.
Voss, who is in his fourth season playing alongside Chakas, said his first move after the postgame presser would be to go check on his friend.
“We hope that he’s doing OK and it’s nothing too serious,” Voss said. “He really helped us tonight against a really good team.”
UH had its streak of 24 consecutive sets won snapped in the first set and was taken to five sets for only the second time. UH’s only loss was in five to Loyola-Chicago the first week of the season.
Chakas finished with a team-high 17 kills and senior Keoni Thiim came off the bench to contribute five kills, five assists, 12 digs and five of UH’s nine aces.
Hilir Henno had a career-high 36 kills in 68 swings and former UH setter and libero Brett Sheward had 30 assists, 22 digs and three kills.
Sheward was teammates with Chakas for three seasons and spent five years at UH.
“Really special being back here. I miss this place so much. It’s such a unique environment,” Sheward said. “I just turned around and (Chakas) was on the ground. That was crushing.”
Thiim set the tone in the fifth set, serving the first three points with an ace and forcing a UCI timeout at 3-0.
Sophomore Kurt Nusterer was in on three blocks and setter Tread Rosenthal’s kill off an ‘Eleu Choy pass gave UH its first of four match points at 14-10.
Henno staved off the first match point with a kill before Chakas was blocked on the play he fell to the floor.
Henno followed the short delay with his third ace before Voss ended the marathon match after 3 hours, 17 minutes.
“We did the exact same thing we did against Loyola with Keoni starting as the first server and Spyros starting at left front,” Wade said. “(Against) Loyola (Thiim) missed both times and tonight … the difference in the fifth set was Keoni’s first service turn to go back and get three real points. It was good for him for a lot of reasons.”
Henno, who had 107 swings in the first two matches, had 12 kills on 21 swings in the first set for the Anteaters (13-6), who went five sets in all three Outrigger matches.
Hawaii got only three kills in 17 swings from its outside hitters in the opening set and kept Thiim in to start the second set in place of Chaz Galloway.
Todd powered a kill past a triple block for the first three-point lead of the second set at 15-12 entering the media timeout.
Henno had six more kills in the second set but UH forced him into four errors, with two critical ones coming late, including the final on set point to tie the match at 1-1.
Wade went to his bench in the third set and brought in freshman Louis Sakanoko for full rotations at opposite in Todd’s place with UH ahead 14-11.
Sakanoko put down his first two kill attempts and then hammered Hawaii’s sixth ace for a 19-17 lead.
His pancake block during a rally allowed UH to triple block Henno for a 23-20 lead.
A service error pulled the Anteaters to 24-22 before Sakanoko obliterated his third kill at set point to put UH ahead two sets to one.
“We ended up spinning it at the end changing the matchup,” Wade said. “(Maxim Grigoriev) was really doing the damage in that rotation and so we wanted Louis to go in and receive and be able to hit in area four and, actually, the set ended that way too.”
The Anteaters took the drama out of the fourth set quickly with a 9-0 run early to go up 12-2. Henno served eight consecutive UCI points to force Hawaii to bring back Todd for Sakanoko trailing by nine.
A Thiim kill ended the run and Todd served four consecutive UH points before Henno put an end to UH’s 5-0 run.
UCI held Hawaii to less than 20 points in a set to 25 for the first time this season.
No. 1 Grand Canyon 3, No. 14 Lewis 2
Jarrett Anderson led four Lopes in double figures with 14 kills and Grand Canyon avoided going winless in the tournament with a 23-25, 18-25, 25-17, 25-14, 15-11 win over the Flyers.
GCU (16-2) outhit Lewis (11-10) .407 to .287 and setter Nicholas Slight had a double-double of 49 assists and 10 digs to go along with five blocks.
Max Roquet had a match-high 20 kills and six blocks for Lewis.
NO. 3 HAWAII DEF. NO. 5 UC IRVINE
23-25 25-19, 25-22, 17-25, 15-13
ANTEATERS (13-6)
S K E ATT PCT D BA PTS
Henno 536 8 68 .412 6 2 40
Tangutur 510 3 26 .269 6 3 12.5
Grigoriev 5 9 4 24 .208 3 6 12
Campbell 5 8 4 23 .174 0 3 10.5
Sheward 5 3 2 9 .11122 2 4
Kiriakou 5 1 0 2 .500 0 0 1
Lau 4 0 0 0 .000 2 0 0
Power 5 0 0 0 .000 8 0 0
Karlous 5 0 0 2 .000 8 2 1
Dahm 5 0 0 0 .000 0 0 0
MATCH 5 67 21 154 .299 55 18 81
RAINBOW WARRIORS (17-1)
S K E ATT PCT D BA PTS
Chakas 5 17 7 41 .244 8 3 18.5
Todd 513 6 36 .194 6 3 16.5
Voss 5 8 0 21 .381 3 5 10.5
Nusterer 5 6 1 10 .500 2 9 12.5
Thiim 5 5 4 20 .05012 2 11
Rosenthal 5 4 0 5 .800 4 7 7.5
Sakanoko 3 4 1 8 .375 1 1 5.5
Galloway 3 2 1 10 .100 1 2 3
Choy 5 0 0 0 .00010 0 0
Taylor 1 0 0 0 .000 0 0 0
Kauling 3 0 0 0 .000 1 0 0
MATCH 5 59 20 151 .258 48 32 85
Service aces — UC Irvine 4 (Henno 3,
Tangutur). Hawaii 9 (Thiim 5, Nusterer 2,
Sakanoko, Todd). Service errors — UC Irvine 14 (Grigoriev 4, Dahm 3, Henno 3,
Karlous 2, Kiriakou, Tangutur). Hawaii 13
(Nusterer 3, Rosenthal 3, Chakas 2, Thiim
2, Kauling, Sakanoko, Todd). Assists —
UC Irvine 63 (Sheward 30, Karlous 28,
Tangutur 3, Henno, Power). Hawaii 57
(Rosenthal 41, Kauling 6, Thiim 5, Choy 2,
Chakas, Todd, Voss). Block solos — UC
Irvine 1 (Campbell). Hawaii 1 (Voss). Ball
handling errors — UC Irvine none. Hawaii
none. Reception errors — UC Irvine 9
(Power 4, Henno 3, Tangutur 2). Hawaii 4
(Choy 2, Chakas, Sakanoko). T — 3:17 A —
7558. Officials — Dickson Chun, Wayne
Lee, Randy Robonal, Mark Nakashima.
