The formula is a simple one for Hawaii men’s volleyball coach Charlie Wade.
Serve inbounds 90% of the time and the Rainbow Warriors are winners 100% of the time.
That was the case last Wednesday night as the two-time defending Big West champions swept Loyola Chicago to open the season in an impressive performance in which UH had more aces (six) than errors (five) from behind the service line.
That was the good. The not-so-good came two nights later. Hawaii ripped off 11 aces but made a staggering 27 errors that ultimately doomed it in a five-set loss to the Ramblers to start the season 1-1.
UH served in 93% of the time in the win and just 75% in the loss.
The Rainbow Warriors, who were jumped by UC Irvine and fell to No. 4 in this week’s AVCA/NVA National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Poll, get right back at it for the first of two matches against Emmanuel University tonight at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
UH has played the Lions, who are making their season debut, once — in the 2020 Rainbow Warrior Classic, a match the Rainbow Warriors won in straight sets.
“We will learn and be better for it,” Wade said Tuesday of Friday’s loss. “We hit for big numbers the entire match. The second set was the one where we made 15 errors. At the end of the day, if you make that many errors you’re going to lose against virtually any team, let alone a really good one.”
The road to getting better begins with Emmanuel, a private Christian university in Franklin Springs, Ga., with an enrollment of more than 900.
The men’s volleyball team went 8-20 last season and played in the Conference Carolinas, where it finished 3-11 and dropped 15 of its last 17 sets.
Hawaii is 10-0 all-time against current Conference Carolinas teams and has played every current member except Mount Olive at least once.
The only set UH dropped in those matches was against Barton in 2018.
“We’re really kind of looking at tweaking the kind of stuff we saw from our team last week and reevaluating where we are,” Wade said. “I think we’ve got a few more guys back in the mix and seeing how we can integrate them into practice. The focus has been more on our side of the net.”
Wade noted after Friday’s match that while “losing sucks,” there was a lot of good that happened in that loss. Opposite Alaka’i Todd did not commit an error in 22 swings with 12 kills to hit a career-best .545.
Junior libero ‘Eleu Choy committed just one reception error in 48 receive attempts in two matches against Loyola Chicago.
Senior Guilherme Voss, who had just seven attempts in the opener, hit a career-high .846 with 11 kills in 13 swings without an error.
Hawaii had not lost a match when hitting .469 as it did Friday in at least 12 years.
“We saw some great individual performances,” Wade said on Friday. “We wanted to get the middles more involved and we did. A lot of good stuff happened out there tonight and we’ll learn from it and move forward.”
Rainbow Warrior Volleyball
Who: No. 4 Hawaii (1-1) vs. Emmanuel (0-0)
Where: SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center
When: Tonight and Friday, 7 p.m.
TV: Spectrum Sports (Ch. 1012)
Radio: KKEA, 1420-AM / 97.5 FM
