IRVINE, Calif. — The second-ranked Hawaii men’s volleyball team gets to face the one team it lost to in conference play in the semifinals of the Outrigger Big West Men’s Volleyball Championship.
The Rainbow Warriors (26-4) draw No. 5 seed UC San Diego in today’s first semifinal at Bren Events Center at 2 p.m. after the Tritons picked up a surprising sweep of No. 4 seed UC Santa Barbara on Thursday.
UCSD (13-13) beating the Gauchos (14-12) wasn’t the shocker. The teams split their two regular-season matches.
The surprise was the amount of time. Both regular-season matchups went five sets. This match took just over 90 minutes.
“I’m really proud of our guys to take over from the end line with our serves,” UCSD coach Brad Rostratter said. “Our Achilles’ heel the last 10 sets we have played against the Gauchos is fighting off their aces and being able to consistently play volleyball against them. I thought we made a tremendous stride against that.”
UC San Diego junior outside hitter Sebastiano Sani, the only Triton to earn first-team, All-BWC honors, hammered UCSD’s ninth ace off a Gauchos player on match point to end it.
Sani had 10 kills and three aces and Josh Ewert had a match-high 13 kills for UCSD, which also got 32 assists, five kills, six blocks, three digs and two aces from junior setter Cameron Wurl.
The Tritons handed Hawaii its only conference loss two weekends ago when the ’Bows didn’t start junior setter Tread Rosenthal, who was battling an illness that left him throwing up just prior to the start of the match.
UCSD tallied a season-high 15 blocks in the four-set win and finished with nine aces, which is the most the ‘Bows have given up in a match this season.
Wurl made his first start since Jan. 30 in the match and guided UCSD to a .327 hitting percentage. It is one of only four times Hawaii allowed an opponent to hit over .300.
“I think Hawaii relies a lot on their size and physicality, which we are going to prep for,” Wurl said. “I’ll be in my little hotel room tonight watching some film, so we’ll be ready for whatever comes at us (today).”
UC San Diego won the only meeting between the two schools in the Big West tournament in 2021, when the Tritons came to Hawaii as the No. 4 seed and shocked the top-seeded ’Bows in five sets in the semifinals.
Hawaii went on to win the first of back-to-back national championships.
“We’ll have a good plan,” Rostratter said. “It was two weeks ago (when UCSD won), so we’re still pretty familiar with them. We don’t need a ton of details. I think we just know we have to play good volleyball.”
The third-seeded tournament host Anteaters got 13 kills from both Andreas Brinck and Andrej Jokanovic and survived upset-minded Cal State Northridge 25-20, 20-25, 25-15, 25-23 to advance to tonight’s second semifinal against No. 2 Long Beach State.
The Matadors (12-15), who went winless in the regular season, got a match-high 21 kills in 45 swings from Jalen Phillips, who hit .311 in the loss. He also had six blocks and five aces.
Jokanovic added four aces for the Anteaters (18-7), including on match point, which UCI won after challenging an out call.
UC Irvine has never won a Big West championship but is looking to reach the tournament final for the third time in four years. Long Beach State won both regular-season matches against the Anteaters last weekend, in five and four sets.