Five matches into his Hawaii career at a new position, Justin Todd is developing a knack for sending teams home with a match-clinching block.
The Moanalua alumnus, who redshirted last season and made his third career start on Friday night, polished off No. 4 Hawaii’s 25-17, 25-17, 25-23 sweep of No. 19 Princeton with his sixth block to send a SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 6,297 home happy.
Todd, who also sealed UH’s five-set victory over Harvard a week earlier with a block on match point, did it again on UH’s third attempt against the Tigers (0-3) to earn its third sweep of the season.
Hawaii finished with 9.5 total blocks, more than quadrupling its total of two against Princeton on Wednesday night.
“Doing it two times (in a week) and hearing the fans go wild is the best feeling,” Todd said. “I think I was watching (Princeton) a lot more trying to figure out what kind of sets the setter was doing and his tendencies and picking out which guys he was going to. They weren’t hitting much line, so that made a big difference.”
Hawaii finished its season-opening homestand a perfect 6-0 and dropped only four sets.
Freshman Adrien Roure had a team-high 10 kills, six digs and four aces and fellow outside hitter Clay Wieter added nine kills in 15 swings and hit .467 for the match.
UH won’t play another match for two weeks, when it hits the road for the first time for the first of back-to-back matches at No. 5 Brigham Young on Jan. 31.
“It will be really good for us to string together a week of practice, because with this Friday-Sunday and then Wednesday-Friday back to back, we really haven’t had any quality practice,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said. “We’ll get a chance to string together some good practices and work on all of the stuff we have identified here the first few weeks.”
Hawaii had nice aces, with setter Tread Rosenthal and Louis Sakanoko, who played in two sets, recording two apiece.
Kurt Nusterer added three blocks and combined with Todd for nine kills out of the middle.
The Rainbow Warriors hit .524 and dominated the first set with three blocks, which was one more than they had in all of Wednesday’s four-set win.
Wieter put down each of his first three kill attempts before he was replaced midway through the set by Sakanoko with UH ahead 17-11.
Sakanoko, who had played in only four sets coming in, served the next four points, with back-to-back aces to allow Hawaii to handily go on to a 1-0 lead.
“He’s been out here working so hard on his serve and in the pregame he hit 80 on the gun, I saw it,” Wade said. “I’m like, ‘I can put that in the game.’”
UH won the next set by the same margin, with Roure, Kristian Titriyski and Wieter combining for 10 of Hawaii’s 14 kills.
Back-to-back blocks for the Tigers trailing 20-13 kept UH’s hitting percentage to less than .500. Otherwise it was another efficient performance, with Rosenthal spreading the offense around.
Roure had seven kills and Titriyski and Wieter had six kills apiece through two sets, while middle blockers Nusterer and Todd had three kills and three blocks apiece.
“I think a big thing was we were really confused because we hadn’t played much with these new pin hitters,” Nusterer said. “The blocking dynamic is something that as time goes on it gets better and better and better. Just the fact that we had another day of practice and three more sets behind us I think mattered.”
The Tigers tried to make it interesting in the third set with a 6-1 run after falling behind 18-11 to get within two points.
Wieter ended the run with a kill just in front of the back line and Mason Rice, who finished with a match-high 11 kills, hit a ball into the net to push the lead back to four.
Princeton double-blocked Wieter for its seventh block in the match, but UH answered with a Rosenthal kill.
A Todd kill set up UH’s first match point and Princeton scored the next two, prompting coach Wade to call timeout before Todd teamed with Kainoa Wade on the block to end it.
UH is now 19-0 against teams from the EIVA not named Penn State.