In the span of 24 hours, the Hawaii women’s volleyball team showed it can both win the Big West Conference and potentially not even qualify for the six-team league tournament.
In a disturbing trend in Big West play, the Rainbow Wahine followed up an impressive, dominant performance against preseason favorite Cal Poly with a stunning 25-18, 25-19, 25-22 loss to UC Santa Barbara on Saturday in The Thunderdome in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Eva Travis, Sophie Reavis and Emma McDermott all had 10 kills for UC Santa Barbara, which hit .336 as a team and had six players with at least four kills, with five of them hitting .333 or better.
Hawaii junior outside Caylen Alexander had a match-high 20 kills and seven digs, but committed 10 of UH’s 19 attack errors.
Hawaii hit .205 as a team, managed just one block, had no service aces to four service errors and was credited with five block errors and had at least 10 net violations, which isn’t an official statistic.
UC Santa Barbara outblocked Hawaii 8-1, with the last coming on match point, and even outdug the Rainbow Wahine 50-48. The single block was the lowest total UH has had in a match since getting none in an NCAA semifinal against Penn State in 2009.
It was a clean sweep across the board and one coach Robyn Ah Mow was not happy about.
“Nobody was doing their job. It’s like we never gave them a scouting report, which we did,” Ah Mow said. “Everybody is firing on all cylinders yesterday. They were all dialed in and then we get swept by Santa Barbara, but the hitting and serving from Cal Poly was way harder than what we saw tonight, but (UCSB) swept us. They just young — young with young minds.”
UC Santa Barbara, which was swept by the Mustangs on Thursday, got back to .500 in league play at 4-4 and is 8-12 overall.
Hawaii fell to 11-7 overall and 5-3 in conference. The sweep was the first UH suffered in conference play since UCSB did it to the Rainbow Wahine last year in Hawaii en route to winning the Big West in the regular season.
The Gauchos lost to Long Beach State in the BWC semifinals but were awarded an at-large selection into the NCAA Tournament.
“Just no discipline. They cannot play back-to-back (matches) well,” Ah Mow said. “Again, I don’t know. I have no answer for you. I think watching them warm up today, I had bad vibes. There was no talk. We look at them sometimes (in the timeout) and we just get blank faces.”
Jacyn Bamis added nine kills and hit .438 and Tali Hakas had a team-high 12 digs and added six kills.
Freshman middle blocker Miliana Sylvester was held to four kills and hit .154 with no blocks, and sophomore Stella Adeyemi had three kills and four errors before she was replaced in the third set by freshman Adrianna Arquette.
Hakas moved to the left side and Arquette played the right side to help UH hold a 15-14 advantage midway through the set.
The Gauchos scored six of the next seven points, with Hawaii’s only score coming on a service error, to put the match away.
Hawaii will conclude its three-match road trip at Cal State Bakersfield on Tuesday at 3 p.m.