On this night, Chaz Galloway served as the closer.
After being subbed out on a service turn early in Saturday’s match against UC Irvine, the University of Hawaii outside hitter delivered from behind the line in closing out all three sets in the Rainbow Warriors’ sweep of the Anteaters on Saturday at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
Galloway was on the line when the Warriors completed a momentum-seizing comeback late in the first set. He fired an ace and forced an overpass to close out the second and again set up the final two points of the match with tough serves as No. 1 Hawaii completed a series sweep with a 26-24, 25-20, 25-19 victory over No.5 UC Irvine before a “Magnum P.I. Night” crowd of 7,748.
“That’s what we train for,” Galloway said. “To be in the moment, having however many people were out there cheering for you, you can go back there and give your best serve.
“(UH reserve Keoni Thiim) was in the back and he’s like, ‘Just send it, just crack it.’ So that’s what I did — I tossed it high and I went for it.”
Galloway delivered two of UH’s eight aces and opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias shook off a rough serving night on Friday to land three aces in the Warriors’ seventh consecutive win and 13th straight in the series with the Anteaters.
Mouchlias led the Rainbow Warriors with 12 kills and Galloway and Spyros Chakas added nine each and UH (24-2, 7-1 Big West) will enter the final week of the regular season tied with Long Beach State (18-3, 7-1) for first place in the conference race.
UC Irvine (16-8, 6-2) entered the week as the lone unbeaten team in Big West play but dropped to third with two losses in Manoa and will face LBSU in a home-and-home series this week.
The Warriors close the regular season with a series against UC San Diego (8-14, 2-6) starting Friday with senior night set for Saturday.
“I had no idea about (the standings),” Galloway said. “I feel like we we’re taking it one match at a time and focusing on the opponent across the net and next week with San Diego, they’re going to be great games and hope to celebrate the seniors.”
The series with the Tritons will mark the final home appearances for Mouchlias, setter Jakob Thelle, middle blocker Cole Hogland, and outside hitters Kana’i Akana, Filip Humler and Devon Johnson.
UCI opposite Francesco Sani put away a match-high 15 kills and outside hitter Cole Gillis added 12 kills on 21 swings. Hilir Henno, the nation’s leader in aces, scored on his first two serves of the match, but UH effectively handled UCI’s serves for much of the evening.
UCI entered the week leading the Big West in aces per set but was shutout from the service line after Henno’s first turn.
“That was one of the things we really thought we could do a better job of,” UH coach Charlie Wade said of UH’s passing. “They started (Sani and Henno) off back-to-back and it puts a lot of pressure on you getting those guys off the line.
“We needed to keep Jakob on the net and I thought we did a better job of that tonight.”
Thelle finished with 36 assists and three kills for an attack that hit .424, and the back-row work of Galloway, Chakas and libero Brett Sheward allowed him to feed Hogland for eight kills on 11 error-free attacks, while Guilherme Voss had four kills on seven swings in the middle.
“The guys always help me out having solid passes and settles the tone and allows me to play the offense that we like to play,” Thelle said.
Mouchlias had five service errors in UH’s four-set win on Friday but delivered a five-point service turn in the first set Saturday to answer Henno’s early run and later drilled an ace to tie the set at 23-23. After a Gillis kill gave UCI set point, Mouchlias answered to force deuce and Hogland and Thelle teamed on a block to flip the advantage to UH. Chakas then landed a kill in the middle of the UCI defense to give UH the set and momentum they carried into the next two sets.
“I think today was just really strong by us mentally and coming and making good service turns at the end of the set,” Thelle said.”Just being mentally on it and taking those risks on serve and just being confident with it definitely helped us tonight.”
Galloway and Thelle had aces off the net cord early in the third set and Mouchlias added two more aces while finishing with just two service errors in his 19 attempts.
“We talked about it at practice today and tried to clarify in his mind a little bit what he was doing,” Wade said. “And turned out he was trying to do too much. He was seeing different things when it’s just keep it simple and just keep banging it hard into the court. He did a really nice job today.”
