Former conference foe Rice gave Hawaii a preview of what the upcoming conference season could look like on Thursday’s first night of the 17th annual Verizon Volleyball Challenge

The 12th-ranked Rainbow Wahine silenced the Owls 25-10, 25-18, 25-19 before 3,389 at Stan Sheriff Center.

Rice (3-3) had won its past three, but did not win any moment of this match. Hawaii (6-1) scored the final 12 points of the opening set and emptied the bench in its most dominant performance of the young season.

“We stayed steady and they didn’t,” UH coach Dave Shoji said. “That was a big thing for us. We’ve given up some runs here and there and tonight we didn’t.”

The Owls were battered by the UH jump servers, with freshman Jane Croson blasting four aces and Chanteal Satele and Emily Hartong cranking one each, and generally wreaking havoc with Rice’s serve-receive. That infected every part of the Owls’ game.

“We’re typically a pretty strong passing team,” said coach Genny Volpe, who has guided Rice to three NCAA tournaments the past seven seasons. “We even scouted the Hawaii serves because we knew they were going to be the toughest serves we’ve seen.

“Hawaii takes it to another level. Lots of strong serves, movement, speed, so we passed a lot of balls over the net. Anytime a team takes you out with their serving it’s going to spill over into other things. … Our bread and butter is our speed and we couldn’t bring our speed tonight.”

Owls senior Jordan Meredith played with UH senior Kanani Danielson at Kamehameha. Meredith spent two years at Boston College, then transferred to Rice last season. The sports management/business major has started constantly and studied constantly, earning all-conference academic honors in the Atlantic Coast Conference and in Conference USA.

Her analysis of her team’s passing was simple.

“We were getting the ball to the right spot,” said Meredith, who shared kill honors with two teammates at five, “but the slight adrenaline boost was pushing it over a little farther than we wanted it to go.”

Hawaii bounced back from its first loss (to UCLA on Sunday) with a vengeance, slamming almost every overpass the floor. It hit .417 as a team, with Croson blasting 16 kills in just 22 swings without an error and Brittany Hewitt a torrid 9-for-11.

Croson’s .727 hitting percentage was 600 points higher than her struggles Sunday.

“I just thought the team did really well overall,” she said. “There was no miscommunication and everyone just went out there and had fun.”

Hewitt also had half the Hawaii blocks, all four coming while Emily Hartong and Kristina Kam served the final 12 points of the opening set. The Wahine had all but one of their eight stuffs in the back half of that set.

They were particularly tough on Nancy Cole, the Owls’ most prolific attacker. She took four swings and was rejected three times.

Shoji tried four new faces in the second set with little dropoff. In the third, he started Kalei Adolpho in the middle — the freshman from Molokai had her first two collegiate kills — and Alex Griffiths at libero, moving Hartong to the right. The Wahine hit .469 and their biggest surge came with Adolpho, Croson and Hartong in the front row.

Thursday, Shoji announced that Jade Vorster, Hawaii’s other freshman middle, will redshirt this year. That makes Adolpho’s progress even more crucial.

“Kalei is really coming around in practice,” Shoji said. “Her and Jade, but now we’ve decided to save Jade’s year. Kalei certainly has some physical ability.”

Cincinnati (6-3) won its sixth straight in the opener, defeating Pacific 25-22, 25-23, 25-22.

The Bearcats got at least eight kills from four hitters, led by Jordanne Scott’s 10.

Jennifer Sanders had 12 kills and hit .550 for the Tigers (6-2), who used all three Hawaii players on their roster. Rebekah Torres is their starting libero and Koala Matsuoka also played back row. Samantha Misa, who moved from Waipahu to Utah in high school, starts at hitter.