One of the many lessons the No. 2 Hawaii men’s volleyball team is learning on the fly is that room for error isn’t what it once was.
No. 18 Cal State Northridge made 10 fewer hitting errors and got 17 kills from Jalen Phillips to end a nine-match losing streak to the Rainbow Warriors with a 25-23, 25-16, 22-25, 25-21 victory on Saturday night — its first Big West Conference win of the season.
Griffin Walters added 15 kills and Kyle Hobus had 11 for CSUN (10-11, 1-3), which snapped UH’s 14-match home winning streak.
“They were literally, like, falling and diving and putting balls right to the target and some nights are like that,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said. “They were good all night and we were just OK.”
Freshman Louis Sakanoko had a match-high 19 kills for Hawaii (18-4, 1-3), which was outhit .387 to .240.
Hawaii avoided its first home sweep since last season when Sakanoko had seven kills in 11 swings in the third set.
UH trailed 20-19 in the fourth set when the Matadors got their next three points on two attack errors and a service error by Sakanoko.
“You saw at the end, Alaka’i (Todd) hit one, Louis had (two). If we get you one-on-one, you should score at a really high percentage,” Wade said. “Look, some of it, I think that’s a team too, again, pretty veteran group. I’ve got to think that’s the first time they’ve beaten us in their careers. They get tired of losing.”
Todd finished with 12 kills for UH, which got a combined eight kills and seven errors from Chaz Galloway and Keoni Thiim.
Galloway played two sets before giving way to Thiim to start the third. He came back in the fourth with UH trailing 19-14 and helped get the Rainbow Warriors within a point before CSUN pulled away.
“From the beginning, our warmup was a little tough and some of the guys are beat up, but not to use that as an excuse, I think (CSUN) came out with more fire than us,” Todd said. “We were trying our best all night to compete with that fire, but we just couldn’t really get to that level of less errors. We had about 12 (combined) errors a set.”
CSUN outhit Hawaii .560 to 346 to take the first set by a two-point margin. Phillips had six kills for the Matadors and Hobus, who led the match with 21 kills in Friday’s four-set loss, put down his fifth to end the set.
Galloway staved off one set point for Hawaii, but UH couldn’t overcome 4.5 blocks for the Matadors.
Guilherme Voss was in on one of Hawaii’s 2.5 blocks in the first set to pass Taylor Averill and Matt Rawson for fifth on the school’s career list with 407.
The Matadors poured it on in the second set, handing the Rainbow Warriors their worst set loss of the season at home.
Phillips added six more kills in the match, including the set ender that was initially called out but overturned after a challenge for hitting off the block.
CSUN kept its hitting percentage for the match over .500, while Hawaii’s dipped to .271.
Wade went to senior setter Kevin Kauling down 18-11 in the set for Tread Rosenthal and brought in sophomore Oguzhan Oguz at opposite for Todd.
Galloway recorded an ace, but the offense remained out of system and looked lost at times as CSUN took full advantage.
“It was (18) to 11 at that point and we’re just going to go ahead and mix it up and let Tread sit back and take a look,” Wade said. “I thought he responded well and came out the third set and got Louis involved.”
UH turned to Thiim in the third set at outside hitter for Galloway. He struggled with two errors and a kill in his first five swings, but he got UH up two at the media timeout with an ace to make it 15-13.
Sakanoko’s seventh kill of the set prompted CSUN to use its first timeout at 18-14, but Hawaii called one three points later after Phillips cut the UH lead to 18-17.
A crucial net violation on the Matadors on what looked like was going to be an easy kill made UH’s lead 22-19 instead of 21-20, prompting a second CSUN timeout.
A Voss ace made it a four-point match before CSUN again pulled to a point at 23-22.
Todd hammered a kill for set point and the Matadors hit out to extend the match.
“We were just talking about trying to fix the little things, small adjustments. It wasn’t like we were playing terribly,” Todd said between the second and third set. “(CSUN’s) serving was really good and I think they beat us in the serve and passing game. We were off the net a lot tonight and they were on the net a lot tonight. In men’s volleyball, you can run anything you want when you’ve got the ball on the net 90% of the time.”
Hawaii will play its final two regular season matches at home next week against UC Santa Barbara.