Hawaii’s starting freshman pin hitters Adrien Roure and Kristian Titriyski combined for 27 kills, which nearly matched the entire Queens team, in the fourth-ranked Rainbow Warriors’ 25-19, 25-21, 25-16 sweep of the Royals on Friday in Levine Center in Charlotte, N.C.
Roure had his best match in more than a month, hitting .462 with a match-high 14 kills, and Titriyski added 13 kills and hit .391 for Hawaii (11-1), which swept its opponent for the second day in a row.
Roure, who snapped a streak of four straight matches hitting .222 or below in Thursday’s sweep of Belmont Abbey, had only two errors in 26 swings. He also contributed six digs.
“We were a little, not quite as clean as we liked, but definitely good to see those guys playing pretty solid the whole time,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said in a phone interview.
Sophomore setter Tread Rosenthal added a match-high 35 assists, eight digs, three aces and four kills in four swings and directed UH’s offensive to a .354 hitting percentage.
Carson Strawbridge had 13 of the Royals’ 28 total kills and hit .550. Chance Shampine added 10 kills with a .138 hitting percentage. Nobody else hit positive in the match for Queens (9-6), which ended the night hitting .129 as a team.
“They ran the bic a lot, more so than we thought,” Wade said. “That’s why the blocking numbers weren’t (high). They just didn’t set the ball in front of Tread and Kristian very much. They ran it out of the middle of the court as much as they could to pretty good effect. (Strawbridge) hit for a big number and he played well.”
Hawaii took the opening set by six points, but it was ugly at times. The Royals had five blocks to none for the Rainbow Warriors and UH committed five service errors and six hitting errors.
Queens hit .000 in the set but made Wade call timeout at 21-18 after a four-point scoring run that included three hitting errors for the ‘Bows.
Titriyski, who played only one set in Thursday’s win over Belmont Abbey, had half of Hawaii’s kills in the opening set with seven in 11 swings. He also had four of UH’s 16 digs.
UH cleaned its game up to start the second set, with Rosenthal serving six straight points to give the Rainbow Warriors an early 7-1 lead.
Rosenthal had two aces and Roure put down back-to-back kills to push the lead to 10-2 before the Royals slowly fought their way back.
Hawaii led 18-8 on a Roure kill, but Queens scored nine of the next 12 points to prompt Wade to call a timeout for a second time in the match.
Middle Ofeck Hazan ended the run with a kill and the set ended with the teams trading service errors.
Hawaii stuck with its starting lineup through the first two sets and made one change to begin the third.
Freshman Justin Todd, who had four kills in four swings on Thursday, replaced Hazan in the middle.
The Royals trailed 17-13 when they committed one of their nine service errors. Kainoa Wade entered the match as a serving sub and promptly recorded an ace to start a 5-0 serving run to help put the match away.
“Obviously gotta be happy with Kainoa. Without trying to bachi him, he’s served inbounds every attempt so far this trip,” Charlie Wade said. “Gotta be getting up to 20-something attempts in a row and they are nice serves. It’s not like he’s backing off. He’s stroking it pretty good.”
The Rainbow Warriors improved to 6-0 all-time against Queens and have not dropped a set to the Royals.
The two teams will play again today in what will be Hawaii’s second match of the day at 1 p.m. UH will make an approximately hour-long drive to play Catawba College, a first-year NCAA Division II school, at 6 a.m.
