Hawaii’s relationship with the NCAA volleyball selection committee continues to be a disappointing one as the Rainbow Wahine were not among the 16 teams seeded when the 64-team field was announced today.

Hawaii (26-2) will play Santa Clara (20-11) in Friday’s first round in Seattle. No. 13 seed Washington (23-6) is the host, and will take on Central Arkansas (30-4) in the other first round matchup.

Hawaii came into the week ranked No. 8 in the coaches poll and 16 in the RPI. In Sunday’s RPI, the Wahine were No. 17.

Penn State was seeded No. 1, followed by Stanford, Texas and Nebraska. Rounding out the seeds were Oregon, USC, UCLA, Minnesota, Florida State, Louisville, Kansas, BYU, Washington, Florida, Iowa State and Kentucky.

“Obviously we’re disappointed,” Wahine coach Dave Shoji said. “We feel we deserved a seed. Obviously the committe didn’t see fit to send three teams here (to Hawaii). 

“But we can’t dwell on where we should have or would have been playing. We just move on and get ready for this match.”

Hawaii was the lone Big West team selected. The Wahine went 18-0 in returning to the Big West after 16 years in the Western Athletic Conference. 

The Big Ten and Pac-12 each had seven teams selected while the West Coast Conference had 6.