The Hawaii women’s volleyball team is finally piling up wins, and at the right time.

The Rainbow Wahine have won four of five for the first time this season in Big West play after doing what they needed to do in a 25-11, 20-25, 25-18, 25-14 win over Cal State Bakersfield on Sunday night at Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.

A crowd of 3,258 watched the Rainbow Wahine pull to .500 in conference play at 7-7 (11-14 overall) with their third straight win at home.

Middle blockers Bri Gunderson and Miliana Sylvester tied for match-high honors with 12 kills each and Hawaii held the Roadrunners (5-21, 2-12) to .039 hitting to move into a fifth-place tie with Cal State Northridge, one match up on seventh-place UC Irvine with four to go.

“They were hungry for the opportunity to pick up from where they left off on Friday,” Hawaii assistant coach Nick Castello said. “Kudos to them for being able to take control of the week.”

Hawaii remained undefeated in 11 all-time matches against CSU Bakersfield and ended the two-match homestand winning by double digits in five of the six sets it won.

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UH had won only one other set in conference play by at least 10 points before Sunday.

“I think now the team is starting to believe, and with that belief, it’s putting more focus, more attention to detail on all of the little things that then when we go out to the court, when you guys see us, you see us execute a little more cleanly, play the game a little more cleanly,” Castello said.

Hawaii enjoyed a 13-8 advantage in blocks and outdug Cal State Bakersfield 58-44. Kahea Moriwaki had a career-high three aces and Victoria Leyva, who had a match-high 16 digs, added three more aces to give her seven in the last two matches.

Gunderson hit .526 with seven blocks and Sylvester hit .364 with five blocks.

“I think we’re taking smarter swings, we’re keeping our serves in when it matters for momentum,” Sylvester said. “We’re a little more scrappy than I think we were at the beginning of the season on defense and I think our passing and offense have held up pretty good.”

Sophomore setter Adrianna Arquette had her ninth double-double of the season with 43 assists and 14 digs to go along with four blocks, two kills and two aces.

Hawaii has hit .233 or better in three consecutive matches for the first time since nonconference play.

“Just keeping at it. Going back to practice and making more changes and getting better,” Arquette said.

Hawaii hit .407 in the opening set with only two hitting errors to hold off the Roadrunners by double digits. It was the fourth consecutive set UH won by at least 10 points.

Gunderson had four kills and was in on three of Hawaii’s four blocks. Arquette, who is one of two UH players to appear in every set this season, spread the ball around to seven different players who recorded a kill, including Leyva, who had both of Hawaii’s aces in the set.

The Roadrunners stormed back to even the match, winning the second set with plenty of help from Hawaii, which broke down offensively.

The Rainbow Wahine never gave themselves a chance with 11 hitting errors and four service errors. They also had two net violations to let CSU Bakersfield back into the match despite hitting .161.

“We were error prone early on (in the season) and I think we’ve done a good job of playing a little bit cleaner, but our standard is pretty high,” Castello said. “Second set we go up to 12 (errors), so again, just trying to keep everything (simple) instead of just spiking (the ball) all over the place.”

UH’s passing got better in the third set, allowing Arquette to set Sylvester and Gunderson in the middle more.

Both players had four blocks with Gunderson slamming down her match-high 11th kill on set point to give Hawaii the advantage.

Moriwaki helped put the match away for Hawaii in the fourth set with back-to-back aces during an 8-1 closing run that ended with a kill by Ravyn Dash, who finished with six in 23 swings.

Hawaii plays its final two regular-season road matches this week at UC Santa Barbara on Friday and Cal Poly on Saturday.

HAWAII DEF. CAL STATE BAKERSFIELD 25-11, 20-25, 25-18, 25-14

ROADRUNNERS ( 5-21, 2-12 BIG WEST )

ATTACK SET SERVE BLOCK DEF. REC.

NO. PLAYER SP K E TA PCT. A E SA SE BS BA BE D BHE RE PTS

9 Broszat 4 5 1 17 .235 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 0 0 6.5

13 Zakee 4 9 10 43 -.023 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 5 0 1 9.5

15 Davis 4 9 5 24 .167 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 4 0 0 9.5

8 Jones 4 2 0 5 .400 0 0 0 0 2 3 0 0 0 0 5.5

14 Udell 4 0 0 0 0 2 0 3 2 0 0 0 9 0 4 3.0

17 Trivino Espinosa

4 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 1.0

1 Da Cruz 4 1 1 5 .000 25 0 0 1 0 1 0 9 0 0 1.5

7 Erzen 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 1.0

11 Liljedahl 4 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 0.0

6 Lima 4 4 7 32 -.094 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 9 0 2 5.5

2 Higginbotham

2 0 1 2 -.500 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0.0

12 Kosutic 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Totals 30 25 128 .039 28 0 5 9 2 12 0 44 0 8 43

RAINBOW WAHINE ( 11-14, 7-7 BIG WEST )

ATTACK SET SERVE BLOCK DEF. REC.

NO. PLAYER SP K E TA PCT. A E SA SE BS BA BE D BHE RE PTS

8 Gunderson 4 12 2 19 .526 0 0 0 2 0 7 0 2 0 0 15.5

14 Mane 4 9 2 27 .259 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 3 10.5

2 Leyva 4 1 0 1 1.000 6 0 3 1 0 1 0 16 0 0 4.5

3 Arquette 4 2 0 5 .400 43 0 2 1 0 4 2 14 0 0 6.0

12 Sylvester 4 12 4 22 .364 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 14.5

32 Dash 4 6 5 23 .043 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 4 0 0 6.5

4 Moriwaki 4 0 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 3.0

10 Reid 4 11 10 32 .031 1 0 0 3 0 5 0 5 0 1 13.5

5 Miyasaki 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 13 0 1 0.0

15 Lopezi 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.0

Totals 53 23 129 .233 51 0 8 10 1 24 2 58 0 5 74

T — 2:10. A — 3,258. Officials — Mark Nakashima, Randy Rubonai, Jonathan Tanji, Kerwin

Stenstrom.

BIG WEST WOMEN

Conference Overall

W L Pct. GB W L

UC Davis 13 1 .929 — 17 5

Cal Poly 12 2 .857 1 21 5

UCSB 10 4 .714 3 18 8

Long Beach St. 10 4 .714 3 17 8

CS Northridge 7 7 .500 6 14 11

Hawaii 7 7 .500 6 11 14

UC Irvine 6 8 .429 7 11 15

UC San Diego 410 .286 9 6 20

CS Fullerton 311 .214 10 8 18

UC Riverside 311 .214 10 7 17

CSU Bakersfield 212 .143 11 5 21

Friday

Hawaii 3, Cal State Northridge 0

UC Davis 3, UC Irvine 0

Cal Poly 3, Long Beach State 0

Cal State Fullerton 3, UC Riverside 0

UC San Diego 3, UC Santa Barbara 0

Today

UC Davis 3, Cal State Fullerton 1

UC Irvine 3, UC Riverside 0

Cal Poly 3, UC San Diego 1

UC Santa Barbara 3, Long Beach State 1

Sunday

Hawaii 3, Cal State Bakersfield 1