UH hopes it won’t fail another road test

The Hawaii volleyball team faces another pass/fail test in road matches against Cal State Northridge tonight and Saturday night.

The Rainbow Warriors struggled in the serve-and-receive phases in two road losses to UC Santa Barbara a week ago.

The Warriors returned to Honolulu after those matches, then spent four practices — three in Gym I, one in Northridge’s Matadome — working on volleyball’s most fundamental areas.

"The whole thing is you have to sustain your ability to serve and receive for a long period of time," UH coach Charlie Wade said. "You have to do that at a high level for a long period of time. We were streaky, and Santa Barbara is good, and they’re playing at home, and they’re a little better at home."

The Warriors’ three primary passers — libero Kolby Kanetake and outside hitters Siki Zarkovic and Jace Olsen — are in their second year in the program. Zarkovic has had experience competing in Europe. Olsen was at Penn State for two years before transferring to UH in August 2012.

Freshman left-side hitter Kupono Fey also is a skilled passer.

"It’s largely mental," Wade said of accurately passing serves. "They have the skill and ability to do that. It’s a lot harder in practice than it is in theory to go do it. And doing it on the road is even harder."

The Matadors are aggressive servers. Setter Travis Magorien has 13 aces, an average of 0.5 per set. The Matadors had 13 aces in two road matches last week.

"They’re a traditional grip-it-and-rip-it team," Wade said. "They’ll put service pressure on you all night. We’d better be ready to do the same to them, and to handle the barrage coming at us."

Of the UH starters, middle Taylor Averill is the most efficient server, putting 90.2 percent of his serves in play. Last week, Olsen had a run in which he served nine times during a rotation turn. Opposite Brook Sedore is a powerful server who has 10 aces but 25 errors in 106 attempts.

"It comes down to serving and passing," Averill said. "We’ve shown when our serving and passing numbers are high, (then) our middles are hitting efficiently and our pins are hitting efficiently. It really gets down to basics."

The Warriors are 5-4 overall and 3-3 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. The Matadors are 3-4 and 3-3.

"Three weeks into (MPSF play), it’s still early," Wade said. "We’d like to be on the positive side. But being 3-3 is a lot better than being in a huge hole three weeks in."