Overall it was a great weekend for the University of Hawaii’s court sports. Men’s volleyball wins Friday and Sunday sandwiching women’s basketball’s stirring senior night and men’s hoops winning on the road on Saturday.
People have been asking for a long time what it’s going to take for UH men’s volleyball to be a big thing again. When will the Warriors regain the rock star status they enjoyed back in the late ’90s and when they won that later-to-be-vacated national championship in 2002?
Well, they’re on a hot streak now and the No. 6 team in the country will move up at least one notch after taking two matches from No. 5 Pepperdine over the weekend.
If you like volleyball, UH (now 15-3) — and especially its star middle Taylor Averill — is a must-see. Four home matches remain.
It’s hard, though, to tell if those glory days of off-the-chart team charisma and sold-out Stan Sheriff Center crowds will ever return. This much can be said with certainty, though: The Rainbow Warriors are playing their best volleyball in quite a while.
The fans are gradually catching on, and more eyes will be on them after Sunday’s five-set thriller over Pepperdine — Hawaii’s eighth win in a row.
It put UH atop the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation standings, tied with UC Irvine.
"This is what I envisioned when I came back six years ago," coach Charlie Wade said. "Not just the winning, but having guys the community can respect. They genuinely cherish this whole thing."
Hawaii vs. Pepperdine is always intriguing. The Waves were heavily favored in the coaches’ preseason poll to win the MPSF. This is also the school that UH beat 13 years ago for the championship that was taken away by the NCAA. And these two tangled five years ago in another great match at the SSC, won by UH.
"We never really talk about (the vacated championship)," said senior reserve opposite Ryan Leung, who played at Pepperdine before transferring to Hawaii. "But I remember my senior year of high school watching Pepperdine against Hawaii in the most incredible match I’ve ever seen. I had committed to them already but was still rooting for the home team."
A lot of what Leung does during matches now is cheering, too. But on Sunday he got some brief action against his former school (where his only career kill came against Hawaii). He knows his most important work is done in practice.
"We’re a really deep team, so when we practice it’s like two MPSF teams going up against each other," he said. "That’s pretty rare."
Wade has gotten everyone to accept roles but continue to compete with intensity and discipline.
"It’s something that’s taken a while to build. It’s a characteristic of the consistently good teams in the league," he said. "It’s a process, building the roster so if we need to make changes we can. It’s something we need to do to meet our goal of competing for the final four every year.
The turnstile attendance was announced at 2,929, but something is clearly wrong with the way UH counts its crowds; basketball attendance numbers are also consistently lower than what is actually in the arena.
The lower bowl seats 4,100, and nowhere near a thousand chairs were empty. Also, about 250 fans were sitting in the upper bowl, which was opened because all the tickets for the lower bowl had been distributed.
The crowd was actually at least 3,500.
Yes, that’s still a lot less than what this program drew at its peak.
Something is indeed brewing, though. Maybe it was an audible illusion, but at a key point of the pivotal third set it seemed as loud in the arena as it was during those glory days of 10,000 maniacs showing up for men’s volleyball.
Reach Star-Advertiser sports columnist Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com, his "Quick Reads" blog at staradvertiser.com and twitter.com/davereardon.
