Four.

That’s the maximum amount of matches the Hawaii women’s volleyball team has been capable of winning in a row this season.

If you’re glass-half-full kind of person, you look at Saturday’s four-set loss to UC Irvine in the regular- season finale as a way of getting that defeat out of the way.

Every loss the Rainbow Wahine has had this season against a Big West opponent has been followed with back-to-back wins.

Should that continue, that would mean a fifth consecutive conference championship for UH, which is the No. 2 seed and earned the important seeded bye into the semifinals of the Outrigger Big West Women’s Volleyball Championships this week in Irvine, Calif.

Take it one step further, and if the Rainbow Wahine are fortunate enough to go for that elusive fifth straight win a fourth different time this year, it would have to come in the regional semifinals of the NCAA Tournament.

But as evidenced by my email inbox this season, a lot of sports watchers, or at least Hawaii women’s volleyball watchers to be more specific, choose not to take a positive outlook on things.

Where is the height on this team? Why can’t they block? Does the setter have any clue what she’s doing? Do the coaches even recruit? And on and on and on the complaints have come.

I get it. I really do. Any fan of this program for any serious length of time is used to winning championships and making deep runs in the NCAA Tournament.

But for whatever reason, it seems like this team, a group made up of just two seniors and one returning junior who had significant playing time entering the season, hasn’t been given much of a leash to learn and grow.

There isn’t a lot different between now and this time last season.

The 2023 Rainbow Wahine had lost eight matches and were the No. 2 seed entering the six-team conference tournament.

They made their season what it was by sweeping their way to a conference championship and then beating Iowa State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament before bowing out to host Oregon.

This year’s team has nine losses entering the tournament again as the No. 2 seed. One more victory would give head coach Robyn Ah Mow her sixth 20-win season in seven years.

Everything achieved last season is there to be won again, but with one key difference.

Experience.

Last year’s squad had six seniors, four of whom who started every match down the stretch.

The other three to fill out the starting rotation are the three names that have taken on the leadership duties this season.

Caylen Alexander, Kate Lang and Tayli Ikenaga had all been there before in their UH careers when they helped make that end of season run as underclassmen.

To do it this season, they will have to rely on four other starters who have never seen the court in a Big West tournament match.

This is where that word “trust” comes in.

What is different about this team is once things start to “spiral downward” as Ah Mow put it after Saturday’s match, they can’t seem to make it stop.

When UC Irvine held off Hawaii 26-24 in the third set of the conference opener in September, nobody batted an eye. Surely UH wouldn’t lose the next two sets after being up 2-0 on a team that was 1-46 all-time vs. Hawaii, right?

They did.

When Hawaii swept the eventual No. 1 seed in this week’s tournament, Cal Poly, on the road, surely they weren’t going to play down to their opponents level the next night in Santa Barbara, right?

They got swept.

When UC Riverside, a program that had never defeated the Rainbow Wahine, played like gangbusters in a 29-27 win in the first set, surely UH would shake it off and come back to win, right?

They didn’t.

It isn’t going to be a cakewalk to win this tournament. The conference is as deep as it has been in a long time. UC Irvine, which swept Hawaii in the regular season, needed help from other teams on Saturday just to make the tournament it is hosting as the No. 6 seed.

Picking the team to win is anybody’s guess, just like it has been figuring out which UH volleyball team is going to show up that day.

There will be moments other teams go on runs. Can this volleyball team, with what it has been through this season, look each other in the eyes in those trying times and trust they can figure out how to turn things around?

A fifth straight Big West Conference championship hangs in the balance.

———

Reach Billy Hull at bhull@staradvertiser.com.