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College of Southern Idaho announced that right-side hitter Keani Passi, a 5-foot-9 sophomore from Waianae, will play for Hawaii next season. Passi helped CSI to its 10th NJCAA national championship last month. She will pick up her AVCA Junior College Player of the Year honor at this week’s final four in Louisville, Ky.
Passi led the Golden Eagles in kills and aces, collecting 12 of each is Southern Idaho’s straight-set win over second-seeded Western Nebraska in the national final, where she was tournament MVP. For the season she averaged 3.79 kills (eighth nationally), hit .269 and served 62 aces — 12th in the NJCAA. The Pearl City graduate also averaged 2.47 digs and 0.74 blocks.
CSI, whose volunteer coach is former Rainbow Wahine Babes Kalulu, won its last 29 to finish 33-1.
Passi will join 5-10 setter Tayler Higgins (Punahou) and 6-4 hitter Nikki Taylor (Kaiser) in the Wahine’s 2013 recruiting class.
Shoji to have a word — or two — with NCAA
UH coach Dave Shoji will spend Christmas in Germany watching sons Kawika and Erik play in their professional league. When he returns, he plans to push the NCAA Women’s Volleyball Committee to do more research when it seeds teams for its 64-team tournament.
Shoji was irate when his 27-3 team did not receive a top-16 seed this season, despite a 20-match win streak and a win over Stanford, which held the No. 1 RPI most of the year.
"I want to ask the committee to look at other things, more along the lines of how basketball does it," Shoji said. "Other rankings and actually watching games to see if they can figure out who the legitimate teams are and who might not be."
A top-16 seed would have given the Rainbow Wahine, No. 17, the option of hosting a subregional. It has hosted just once the past nine years, and only after a hosting rule was initiated last year. Instead, eighth-ranked Hawaii traveled to Seattle and lost a five-set second round match to fifth-ranked Washington.
Shoji also wants to push the committee to "consider some alternatives to us hosting," if that is what is preventing his team from getting what he believes is a fair seed. The Wahine were seeded in the top 15 from 2004 to 2010 and traveled to subregionals each season. Last year, after the hosting rule was introduced by the Pac-12 and passed, it was 10th, hosted and made money on its subregional.
"I don’t know what the problem is (with UH hosting) and I don’t know if they’ll ever give me a straight answer," Shoji said. "Members of the NCAA committee are not known for giving straight answers.
"I’m doing this on my own. I want to put several ideas in the committee’s head, have them start thinking outside the box."
Attendance hit and miss
Nebraska and Kansas were the only subregional sites that drew more than 4,000 this year, both averaging under 4,150. Washington, which drew 3,709 to its match with Hawaii, was next at 3,649 and Penn State averaged about 3,500. USC, UCLA, Stanford and Florida State all averaged less than 1,000, with the defending NCAA champion Bruins drawing 1,490 fans combined to their two matches.
Regional crowds last weekend ranged from an average of 9,168 at Omaha to 4,005 at Texas, 3,404 at Purdue and 1,658 at Cal.
When the Wahine hosted the subregional last year they averaged 8,200 and sold out (10,300) the regional semifinal the following week.
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