The Hawaii men\u2019s volleyball team is in cross-your-fingers mode.<\/p>\n
While the No. 2 Rainbow Warriors have a clear case for an at-large berth into the 12-team NCAA Tournament after losing to Long Beach State in the Big West tournament final in Irvine, Calif., on Saturday, UH\u2019s postseason fate is anything but straightforward in the new four-regional format.<\/p>\n
Top-seeded UH (27-5) could not capitalize on five championship point opportunities in the fourth set and got decisively outplayed by the second-seeded Beach (24-4) in Set 5, with tournament MVP Wojciech Gajek putting down 27 kills on .489 efficiency in the 20-25, 27-25, 22-25, 30-28, 15-11 decision at the Bren Events Center.<\/p>\n
The \u2018Bows will learn their fate in the NCAA Selection Show at 10 a.m. Hawaii time Sunday. The top four teams will receive seeds, but that won\u2019t necessarily correspond to the four teams who will get to host a three-team regional.<\/p>\n
UH coach Charlie Wade was asked in the Big West\u2019s postgame press conference for thoughts on where his team should be next week.<\/p>\n
\u201cStan Sheriff Center,\u201d Wade replied quickly. Opposite Kristian Titriyski, sitting to Wade\u2019s left, crossed his fingers on one hand after his coach\u2019s remark.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all interested to see what the committee\u2019s going to do with the bracket,\u201d Wade said minutes earlier. \u201cWe think we\u2019re in a strong position to not only get an at-large bid, but host. But, we\u2019re all going to see what the committee does. I think our guys know that we have a chance to win the national championship this year and I think we\u2019re going to stay focused and show up next week ready to compete.\u201d<\/p>\n
LBSU surged to claim the Big West\u2019s automatic berth to the field in a series of points that stunned the pro-Hawaii crowd in the Bren.<\/p>\n
A few minutes after his team was denied a record fifth Big West tournament title, Wade thanked host UC Irvine, event sponsors the Hawaii Tourism Authority and Outrigger, and congratulated Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were down in the fourth, and we were up in the fourth, then it was kind of back and forth. I give (LBSU) a lot of credit,\u201d Wade said. \u201cThe opposite (Gajek) made some really big swings. The difference was earlier in that set we had some balls back on our side and didn\u2019t transition score, put them away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gajek, a 6-foot-6 freshman opposite from Poland, eclipsed 20 kills only one time in his first collegiate season heading into Saturday \u2014 against Hawaii at the Walter Pyramid on March 20, a match UH won in five.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized real quick that it\u2019s my night,\u201d Gajek said. \u201cI think that was the nicest game we played the whole year.\u201d<\/p>\n
He posted nine kills in Set 4 and five in Set 5 \u2014\u00a0including the match-winner \u2014\u00a0to surpass his previous best of 22 by five. Gajek got in on six blocks and had three aces.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had a game,\u201d UH setter Tread Rosenthal said. \u201cGajek hit .500, saved them in that fourth set. Sometimes that stuff just happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skyler Varga added 16 kills and Jackson Cryst came up clutch with back-to-back aces after LBSU turned back UH yet again to make it 28-all.<\/p>\n
Varga called it \u201ca little bit of revenge from last year\u201d when the Beach lost the Big West final to UH in four sets but went on to win the NCAA championship.<\/p>\n
LBSU and first-year coach Nick MacRae, a former Beach assistant who succeeded mainstay Alan Knipe, picked up their third Big West tournament title, second only to UH\u2019s four.<\/p>\n
LBSU hit .321 to UH\u2019s .286.<\/p>\n
Titriyski led UH with 20 kills but had eight attack errors for the second straight match. Adrien Roure added 15 kills against eight errors and Louis Sakanoko had 17 kills.<\/p>\n
UH was without starting middle Justin Todd, who went out with an apparent ankle injury in Friday\u2019s four-set semifinal win over UC San Diego. Ofeck Hazan started in his stead. Wade called Hazan the \u201cconsummate professional, consummate Warrior.\u201d<\/p>\n
LBSU opened up a 10-4 lead in Set 5 and was content to allow a couple of mini-runs by UH on its way to the title.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey started the fifth set a lot better than us after getting that set before that,\u201d Titriyski said. \u201cSo I think we gotta clear our heads for these past two games \u2026 and just move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u2018Bows are set to land back in Honolulu at 9:50 a.m. and won\u2019t do a team viewing event for the NCAA Selection Show.<\/p>\n
Brian McInnis<\/a>\u00a0covers the state\u2019s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.\u00a0He can be reached at\u00a0brian.mcinnis@<\/a>charter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hawaii men\u2019s volleyball team is in cross-your-fingers mode. While the No. 2 Rainbow Warriors have a clear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[19375,6632,6631,19376,1815,2289,131,133,132,127,136],"class_list":["post-286501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-app-college-sports","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brian-mcinnis","tag-college","tag-hawaii","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}