Baylor went from unbeaten to unable to cope in less than 90 minutes Saturday as sixth-ranked Hawaii blew by the Bears 25-17, 25-13, 25-19 at the 25th annual Hawaiian Airlines Classic.

The Rainbow Wahine ran their volleyball winning streak to five matches to start the season. A victory tonight against 25th-ranked California will clinch their 10th Classic title, but last night’s blowout was probably enough to give UH its first win in this tournament since 2004.

Before a Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 4,967, the Wahine ran away from Baylor (4-1) in every set.
They scored 14 of the final 20 points in the first and closed the second with a 17-5 surge. After the Bears scored five of the first six points in the final set, Hawaii caught them at 11 and sprinted to the finish line with an 11-3 run.

The Bears started three seniors and four freshmen and their youth was served — hard. They could stay with Hawaii only when they passed well and that was rare.

The Wahine had just one official ace, but Baylor senior Kate Harris was setting her offense from behind the 10-foot line much of the night. The Bears hit negative .080 in the second set and .089 for the match.

“They really couldn’t get their middles involved,” UH coach Dave Shoji said, “so they had to go high outside. When you’ve got two freshmen out there hitting high balls it’s not going to be pretty.”

Defensively, Harris and the rest of her team barely touched UH junior Emily Hartong, who had 11 kills and was hitting .611 after two sets. Her first error came an hour into the match and she finished with 18 kills on .457 hitting.

“Mita (Uiato) did a good job opening me up and she was aware when the (5-foot-9) setter was up (on the other side),” Hartong said. “She did a really good job of isolating each hitter. Their middles were honest with our middle, so it left me open the whole time because Jade and Kalei did a really good job getting up in transition.”

Jane Croson added 11 kills and freshman Jade Vorster eight with three hitting errors — one more than she had in her collegiate career until Saturday. Kalei Adolpho dropped in on five of the six UH blocks — four in the first set.

Hawaii started four juniors, two sophomores and Vorster, as it has all season. It played dramatically better than it had in a sweep of San Francisco on Friday, against a team that has gone to two of the last three NCAA tournaments and won its first four matches this season convincingly.

“We had much more energy tonight,” Shoji said. “We were quick to the ball and played high energy. Mita found the hot hitter, too. We went a little too much to the left, but when Hartong is that hot we’ve got to go to her.”

The Classic closes today with Baylor playing San Francisco (4-2) at 3 p.m., followed by Hawaii and Cal (1-3). The Dons beat the Golden Bears on Saturday for the first time in the teams’ 37-match series.

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 — Baylor 2 (Munch-Soegaard, Jones). Hawaii 1(Croson). Service errors — Baylor 6 (Campbell 2, Jones, Richburg, Mayo, Ogden). Hawaii 7 (Croson 3, Hartong 2, Longo, Lelepali) Assists — Baylor 22 (Harris 21, Mayo). Hawaii 39 (Uiato 34, Longo 3, Stauber, Maeda). T — 1:42. Officials — Dan Hironaka, Ernie Ho, Irene Kobayashi. A — 4,967.

San Francisco 3, No. 25 Cal 2

The Dons rode the arms of Ester De Vries and Jocelyn Levig in upsetting their Bay Area rival Golden Bears 22-25, 25-19, 25-22, 20-25, 15-12 over 2 hours and 40 minutes. It was the first ever win over Cal for USF in 37 meetings.

De Vries and Levig each had 16 kills and Valentina Zaloznik added 14 for the Dons (4-2), who celebrated the 36th birthday of assistant coach Eyal Zimet, the former Hawaii hitter. Rebecca
Kopilovitch had 20 of USF’s 73 digs.

Correy Johnson led Cal (1-3) with a match-high 17 kills and Christina Higgins added 14. Mary McKennon had 22 of the Golden Bears’ 73 digs.