Another week, another challenge. And more opportunities to measure the progress of the young season and a young team.

The No. 5 Hawaii SandBows have little time to enjoy the success of last week’s USAV Beach Collegiate Challenge in California when hosting three dual matches and the Rainbow Wahine Spring Challenge starting Wednesday at Queen’s Beach Sandbox.

Hawaii (5-1), losing only to No. 1 Pepperdine last Saturday, faces Arizona (5-0) at 11 a.m. and No. 2 USC (3-1) at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, and No. 7 Nebraska (0-0) at 1 p.m. on Thursday. Among the intriguing story lines this week are the health of UH sophomore Brittany Tiegs, who sat out last Sunday’s pairs event with a sore back, and the return of former Rainbow Wahine Jane Croson, part of Arizona’s No. 1 pair with Madi Kingdon.

Croson she of the crowd-pleasing high-toss serves known as jornada nas estrelas (journey of the stars) and the 6-foot-1 Kingdon are 4-1. Their loss was to Grand Canyon’s No. 1 Kenzie Phelps-Kelli Dallman.

Hawaii did not play Grand Canyon in last weekend’s duals but Phelps-Dallman did defeat UH’s London Chow-Mikayla Tucker 21-13, 21-14 in the Round of 16 of Sunday’s pairs tournament.

UH’s Katie Spieler and Nikki Taylor lost to Pepperdine’s Kelley Larsen-Kelly Woolever 21-18, 16-21, 15-10 in the title match, the second straight weekend that Spieler-Taylor finished second after advancing to the final.

Hawaii lost to Pepperdine 5-0 in Saturday’s dual match but went 5-4 against the Waves in the pairs tournament, 1-1 in the semifinals.

In hindsight, Hawaii coach Scott Wong said he wished that the team would have had an open playing date teams are limited to 16 competition days so that the Wahine could have played Friday instead of having their first match against the top-ranked Waves Saturday morning.

"I’m not one to make excuses," Wong said, "but you always want to go into a competition as equal as possible. Pepperdine had a match under their belts (Friday) at the venue.

"They played really well against us. They are a seasoned team. They showed us where the best is at and we learned from it. Our team responded well."

That included the pairs semifinal where Spieler-Taylor upset Pepperdine’s No. 1 team of Lara Dykstra-Becca Strehlow 21-16, 21-17 . UH No. 2 Karissa Cook and Karlee Riggs were swept by Larsen-Woolever 21-17, 21-12 in the other semi.

Riggs, who had paired with Hannah Rooks at No. 5, replaced Tiegs in Sunday’s play. Wong shuffled his 4-5 teams with Tayler Higgins teaming with Rooks at No. 5 and Tucker replacing Olivia Urban at No. 4 with Chow.

As for which duos Wong will put in Wednesday, it might be a game-day decision that comes about the time the new AVCA Sand poll comes out. Much will depend on how Tiegs a 2012 sand All-American at Florida State feels.

Rules allow for different pairs to be used in different matches but there isn’t supposed to be any switching to get favorable match-ups from contest to contest, or moving duos or a player up or down more than one slot out of five. The intent is to prevent sandbagging’ but, currently, there is no enforcement.

An injury, such as what happened with Tiegs, would have allowed for unlimited changes but Wong decided to leave Nos. 2 and 3 intact while giving two players who hadn’t competed in the duals playing time in the pairs.

"With Brittany out, we decided not to impact the rest of the teams as much as possible," Wong said. "I’m absolutely happy with the team’s progress. We want to be tested along the way, see where we need to make the improvements."