Wahine to play Cincy for title

There were far fewer style points than the night before, but 12th-ranked Hawaii still had too much substance for Pacific on Friday, taming the Tigers 2517, 25-17, 20-25, 25-15 in the 17th annual Verizon Volleyball Challenge.

After a fairly flawless performance in their opener against Rice on Thursday, the Rainbow Wahine (7-1) were not nearly as imposing against UOP. They gave away the third set and could not stop Waipahu’s Samantha Misa, a 5-foot-11 transfer from Southern Idaho, after the first.

But the Wahine took control quickly in the fourth set, scoring nine points on All-American Kanani Danielson’s serve. They will play for their 15th Challenge championship tonight at 7 against Cincinnati, and take a 14-match Challenge win streak into the final.

The Bearcats pushed Friday’s UH match back an hour by rallying to beat Rice in five sets.

While a Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 4,844 watched, Hawaii got another big performance from second-team All-American Brittany Hewitt, and tenacious ones from Danielson (18 kills, 16 digs) and Jane Croson (15 and 10), who shared 84 swings.

Hewitt, who has been struggling with back problems, finished with 10 kills, on .500 hitting, and four blocks.

Hawaii won every statistical category against the Tigers (6-3), but was not dominant enough to substitute for extended periods as it did the night before. When it lost focus in Set 3 — its hitting percentage dropped from .515 to .122 — UOP pulled itself into the match.

“The whole team started really up and we kind of thought we were going to blow through the whole thing,” Hewitt said. “When they started to play up a little more we got down on ourselves. Then we realized we’re up, we’ve got to play like we’re up.”

The Tigers again used all three Hawaii players on their roster extensively. Misa (17 kills) and Rebekah Torres (12 digs) started and Koala Matsuoka (eight digs) came in as a defensive specialist.

Pacific is picked to finish fifth this season in the Big West, the conference Hawaii returns to next year. The teams shared a storied rivalry back in the 1980s and ’90s, but UOP has faded since the Wahine left for the Western Athletic Conference.

The two-time NCAA champions have not qualified for the postseason since 2004, but they made UH look bad for extended periods.

“Sometimes when you’re not completely in control, you think you’re playing badly and we really weren’t,” UH coach Dave Shoji said. “It just seemed like it because we couldn’t get much separation. We needed to celebrate good points like it was UCLA over there. We looked down even though we were ahead. That’s what I thought we should take away from it.”

After some initial sloppiness, the Wahine scored 10 of the last 12 points in the first set. Emily Maeda served the final six, with Hewitt collecting two kills and two of her first three blocks. Megan Birch was the only Tiger with a positive hitting percentage, getting five of their eight kills.

Misa came on in the second set with five kills, but it wasn’t until the third that Hawaii was threatened. It burned its final timeout trailing 21-19, and Misa launched three of the nine kills she had in the set to lift UOP to the win.

“She’s a smart player,” Shoji said. “She trashed our block, threw in the tip every once in awhile to keep us honest.”

The first match lasted 2 hours and 21 minutes, with Cincinnati (7-3) finally winning its seventh straight, 33-35, 1825, 25-18, 25-17, 15-11, over Rice (3-4).

The Bearcats fought off six set points in the first set, with the Owls denying five of their own before winning, then dominating the second set.

Cincinnati rallied after the break behind libero Emily Macintyre, who had a career-high 27 digs, and middles Becca Refenes (14 kills,10 blocks) and Jordanne Scott (14 kills).

Laurie McNamara led Rice with 13 kills but also had 11 hitting errors.

The teams combined for 69 hitting errors.

UOP and Rice play for third place at 3 p.m. today, a change from the original schedule. Cincinnati and Hawaii still play at 7 p.m.

Notes

>> The University of Hawaii is asking fans to come to next Saturday’s match against Pepperdine and stick around after to help film an upcoming Hawaii 5-0 episode. The match starts at 7 p.m. and some 5,000 tickets are available. UH is asking fans to wear green “H” logo shirts.

The Friday-Saturday series with the Waves could be Hawaii’s most compelling matches until the postseason. Pepperdine has two five-set wins over ranked teams the past three days.

The unranked Waves gave 12thranked UCLA its first loss Wednesday, winning 15-13 in the fifth. The Bruins handed Hawaii its first loss a week ago. Pepperdine hadn’t beaten UCLA in seven years. It hadn’t defeated a top-10 team in eight.

>> The Tigers wear the initials “PM” on their arms in memory of Samantha Misa’s father, Pyle, who recently lost his battle with cancer.