Middles trio lead Wahine to sweep of Roadrunners

Hawaii’s 3M Company had quite the corporate picnic at the Stan Sheriff Center Sunday. The Rainbow Wahine trio of middles — Emily Maglio, Olivia Magill and Annie Mitchem — combined for 23 kills with just three errors in the 25-20, 25-12, 25-15 85-minute sweep of CSU Bakersfield.

It was a career performance for Maglio, putting down 12 kills — double her previous high — with Magill adding eight with no errors, hitting .667 in playing two sets. Mitchem, only seeing action in Set 3, put down the last three kills of the match as Hawaii improved to 10-1 heading into this week’s Big West Conference play.

“We’ve been saying that we wanted to get that other middle position involved,” Hawaii coach Dave Shoji said of the battle that’s been going on between Maglio, a sophomore, and Mitchem, a junior transfer. “We’ve been trying to do it for lots of matches because it’s been a little unbalanced. Maglio’s starting to feel the rhythm.”

Maglio had two hitting errors early when putting down four kills in Set 1. She put down her next six attempts in Set 2 and didn’t have a hitting error until late in Set 3 when adding another two kills.

That Hawaii was able to run its middle attack successfully opened it up for the Rainbow Wahine outside hitters. Junior Nikki Taylor, who had led the team in kills in all 10 of the previous matches, finished with 11, one behind Maglio.

Ten of those kills came after Set 1 where the reigning national player of the week was hitting negative .250 with three hitting errors after the first 25 minutes. Taylor didn’t have a hitting error the rest of the night while adding a career-high four aces and sharing match-high blocking honors with Maglio of five block assists each.

“It feels pretty good,” Maglio said of her career high. “I had good connection with the setters.”

“It’s nice to have an offense that is really spread out,” Taylor said. “With the middles being successful, it means I most likely have just one blocker up on me. It really opens up my game and it opens our our games.

“(After the match) we were talking about how the first phase of the season went, about our attitudes. I’m proud of what we’ve done so far. We played really good teams. Being 11-0 would have been better, we had hoped for 11-0, but it’s still a nice way to enter our conference season.”

Hawaii hosts UC Santa Barbara (4-7) on Friday and Cal Poly (8-3) on Saturday. Both matches are at 7 p.m.

“I think we’re ready for conference,” Shoji said. “We tried not to look ahead and were focused on Bakersfield this week.

“I didn’t know what to expect (about the nonconference record). We could have dropped a couple more along the way and I am a little disappointed we didn’t beat UCLA but I’m satisfied with the record. Our second phase of the season starts next week. We can’t be looking ahead to the third phase (NCAA tournament).”

Something that Shoji was pleased with was the lack of a letdown after Set 2. Hawaii had struggled in its last two matches after taking a 2-0 lead, dropping Set 3 against both Eastern Washington and CSU Bakersfield.

The Rainbow Wahine pulled away from a 5-5 tie for leads of 12-7 and 21-15. Katiana Ponce camped out on the service line for the final four points watching as setter Tayler Higgins was successful on a dump shot and Mitchem put down three consecutive kills.

Hawaii is off to its best start since opening 11-1 in 2013.

CSU Bakersfield, which has expressed interest in moving to the Big West from the WAC, dropped to 2-10. Kelsee Sawyer led the Roadrunners with 10 kills.

White defeats Green

In the preceding alumnae match, the White defeated the Green 27-25, 25-22, closing out the win on six consecutive serves by current Wahine assistant coach Robyn Ah Mow-Santos, including the match-ending ace. No statistics were kept during that match that had four players instead of six to a side.

No. 12 Hawaii def. CSU Bakersfield 25-20, 25-12, 25-15

Key — s: games; k: kills; e: hitting errors; att: attempts; pct: hitting percentage; d: digs; bs: block solo; ba: block assists; pts: points (kills plus blocks plus aces).

Service Aces — CSUB 3 (Hayes 2, Sawyer). Hawaii 7 (Taylor 4, Granato, Greeley, Higgins). Service errors — CSUB 7 (Rodriguez 4, Grasso, Haynes, Martins). Hawaii 11 (Higgins 4, Taylor 4, Granato 2, Manu-Olevao). Assists — CSUB 19 (Matins 19, Sawyer). Hawaii 42 (Higgins 39, Manu-Olevao, Mitchem, Taylor). T — 1:25. Officials — Ernest Ho, Wayne Lee. A — 3,650.