Hawaii\u2019s perfect start in its maiden Mountain West Conference season continued Friday night.<\/p>\n
The Rainbow Wahine remained the only undefeated team in the MWC with a 25-14, 25-14, 25-21 sweep of San Jose State before a Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 4,705.<\/p>\n
Hawaii sophomore Cha\u2019lei Reid, who got a rare start at outside in place of an injured Tali Hakas, led the Rainbow Wahine with 13 kills and provided the match-ending double block alongside Miliana Sylvester.<\/p>\n
Hawaii (13-3, 5-0) earned its fifth consecutive sweep to tie the longest streak since it won eight three-set matches in a row in 2016.<\/p>\n
The Rainbow Wahine are in sole possession of first place in the conference heading into tonight\u2019s rematch with the Spartans (6-10, 1-4) at 7 p.m. after UC Davis lost in five sets to New Mexico on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really look at the standings much, but (Thursday) night was significant because now we\u2019re the only team controlling our own destiny,\u201d Hawaii coach Joshua Walker said. \u201cThat\u2019s all that is confirmed. Now it is up to us how badly we want it. That\u2019s the goal for us now. Now it\u2019s completely on our side of the net. We control our own destiny so glad we came out tonight and we got another sweep.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hakas, who played in only three matches last season before a shoulder injury cut her season short, missed the game with a \u201clower leg\u201d injury, according to UH.<\/p>\n
The three starting pin hitters led Hawaii in kills, with outside Panna Ratkai adding 12 with a season-high 13 digs.<\/p>\n
Sophomore opposite Maeli Cormier had a season-high 10 kills and hit .600 with only one error.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew if we passed well we had plenty of options, and that we would stress up their block,\u201d Walker said. \u201cAgainst this team, being able to run a fast offense and have their middles guessing is where you\u2019re going to be the most effective. It was just kind of a smart game from all of the attackers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reid, who ended the match hitting .273, was a perfect 6-for-6 on serve receive. She had eight digs and chipped in three block assists and isn\u2019t worried at all about her shoulder that kept her out of eight matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I\u2019m back, back. It\u2019s been good,\u201d Reid said.<\/p>\n
San Jose State finished the match hitting .112, 39 points lower than UH\u2019s season average for opponent hitting percentage, which ranks in the top 10 in the country.<\/p>\n
Morgan Graves was SJSU\u2019s leading hitter with seven kills.<\/p>\n
UH outdug the Spartans 58-44. Freshman Cameron Holcomb led all players with a career-high 15 digs.<\/p>\n
Hawaii got off to a slow start and fell behind 7-5 before getting things going.<\/p>\n
Cormier, who started on the right to allow Reid to play on the left with Hakas out, had four kills in the opening set, and UH scored 16 of the next 20 points to lead by double digits.<\/p>\n
Rachel Purser slammed a kill to double up the Spartans at 22-11 and ended a long rally on set point with her second kill to set the tone for the night.<\/p>\n
Hawaii, which hit .432 in the opening set, made only two hitting errors in the second set, which ended with Reid putting down her 11th kill in the match.<\/p>\n
UH held the Spartans to a .073 hitting percentage, with Sylvester and Reid each in on two blocks.<\/p>\n
Hawaii led 19-12 in the third set before giving up six of the next seven points after it brought in players off the bench.<\/p>\n
Cormier stopped a 6-1 run with a kill and Hawaii closed out the final two points on Cormier\u2019s final kill and the block.<\/p>\n
Hawaii had four blocks total.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a team effort. The reason why we\u2019re at the top of the conference now is we have a solid team and we\u2019ve had to use different people in different spots,\u201d Walker said. \u201cThat hasn\u2019t changed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hawaii\u2019s perfect start in its maiden Mountain West Conference season continued Friday night. The Rainbow Wahine remained the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[14596,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-491541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-editors","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491541","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=491541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}