When the University of Hawaii women’s volleyball team returns to play Friday night, it will be in a suddenly emboldened, no longer cowering Big West Conference.

Welcome to a league where the membership has begun to imagine the previously unthinkable, that somebody other than the Rainbow Wahine can actually win its championship.

A little over two weeks ago that line of thinking was considered pie-in-sky if not grounds for a commitment for observation.

After all, the Rainbow Wahine had gone 18-0 in their return to the Big West in 2012 and were the unanimous preseason pick to repeat this year. They were the conference’s only nationally ranked team, had beaten the defending national champion and topped most of the major statistical categories.

More telling, they wore "Hawaii" on their jerseys and an unshakable self assurance in their hearts.

But then UC Santa Barbara knocked off the Rainbow Wahine, at the Stan Sheriff Center of all places, to end UH’s 41-match streak of domination of the Big West. That the event was more than just a once-a-decade hiccup was driven home when Cal State Northridge and UC Davis defeated the Rainbow Wahine in consecutive road matches last weekend.

Suddenly UH, a team that had never in 29 years of combined Big West and Western Athletic lost back-to-back conference matches to unranked opponents, dropped three of four matches to the unwashed.

So the reeling Rainbow Wahine are tied for third place in the standings entering the match with UC Irvine.

There are eight matches remaining in the conference season, plenty of opportunity to climb back atop the standings and seize first place and the automatic NCAA berth that goes with it. Ample time to restore order and put down the insurrection.

If, that is, the Rainbow Wahine can regain their swagger.

"We’ve got to get our confidence back," coach Dave Shoji acknowledges. "When you lose matches, you lose confidence. That’s something that, hopefully, we can get back on Friday."

But the psychology has changed in the Big West where a corner has been tuned. While teams still respect the Rainbow Wahine, they no longer quake when UH strides into the arena. "We aren’t going to win just because we are Hawaii," as Shoji puts it.

Maybe that started to change slowly last year when UH was pushed to five games on five Big West occasions, though winning all of them. But it definitely has turned this year where the Rainbow Wahine have gone 0-3 in league five-setters.

"I think everybody has kind of renewed hope that they can beat us — and rightfully so," Shoji said. "We’ve allowed the league to open up. I mean, we have lost some close ones and that brings a lot of teams into the championship picture. On one hand, we need to bounce back and reestablish ourselves as the best team in the conference. But, on the other hand, people know that we can be beaten."

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.