Wahine suffer painful loss in NCAA tournament

MINNEAPOLIS >> They’ll never know.

That, more than anything, is the disappointment that lingered in the air as the Hawaii players left the Sports Pavilion on Saturday.

The Rainbow Wahine will never know if all the film work, the practice time, the scouting report discussion that was crammed into Saturday’s pregame preparation for second-seeded Minnesota would have paid off. They will never know if they could have pulled off the biggest upset in this year’s NCAA volleyball tournament when — highly ranked but unseeded, again — the odds were stacked heavily against them.

Instead, Hawaii ended the season the same way it began, with senior Nikki Taylor on the bench watching her team lose. On Aug. 26, it was Wisconsin winning in four at the Stan Sheriff Center with Taylor sidelined with a sprained elbow.

Saturday, it was another Big Ten opponent that took down Hawaii, this time with Taylor on crutches, her left ankle wrapped in ice. With the two-time Big West Player of the Year going down three points into the match. the top-ranked Golden Gophers needed just 93 minutes to sweep the Wahine, 25-17, 25-17, 25-19, and extend the country’s longest active home winning streak to 34 in front of a near-capacity crowd of 5,442.

It was just the second time that Hawaii (23-6) had lost in straight sets this year, the other coming against UCLA on Sept. 3. This one hurt so much more, as painful to watch as it was seeing Taylor in pain after apparently landing on the foot of Minnesota’s Sarah Wilhite upon coming down after a block attempt.

Wilhite went on to finish with a team-high 13 kills, tying with Wahine senior Annie Mitchem for match-high honors. Taylor finished her standout career with zeros in the box score, forever frozen at 1,377 kills and at No. 11 on the UH all-time career chart.

“We’re not the same team without Nikki Taylor, that’s obvious,” Hawaii coach Dave Shoji said. “She went down, we had no answer. We tried a lot different combinations, but we didn’t have enough firepower.

“I will say that I’m really proud of my team. We played some of our best volleyball, some of our best defense, in this game that I’ve seen all year. We played hard, didn’t give up, we just didn’t have enough firepower to match Minnesota.

“Minnesota’s got a lot of weapons and I think they’ll go very, very far in this tournament.”

As the highest remaining seed in the subregional, the Gophers will host the regional Thursday and Saturday. On a night when several other hosting seeds were ousted in five sets — No. 11 Florida (by Florida State), No. 12 Michigan State (by Arizona) and No. 14 Kansas State (by Ohio State) — Minnesota is happy to be home and will face 15th-seeded Missouri; the other semifinal will have seventh-seeded North Carolina against 10th seed UCLA.

It was the only regional not to have any seed eliminated.

While Minnesota coach Hugh McCutcheon was pleased that his team moved on — the second consecutive season the Gophers eliminated Hawaii — it was dampened by Taylor’s injury.

“It was unfortunate for Nikki,” McCutcheon said. “It’s all part of athletics, but it makes you sick to your stomach when you see that happen. Nikki is a warrior, she battles every night.

“Of course it changes things. It changes who we needed to contain, where we stacked the block. But we continued to play at a very high level and it’s been a wonderful thing to be a part of this season.”

It wasn’t the way that Mitchem wanted hers to end. She had just started to come into her own after moving from middle to left-side hitter and tied her career high in kills in the two consecutive matches here.

“It was really hard to come back after Nikki went down,” said Mitchem, who added five digs and one block. “We weren’t ready for that. Everyone was kind of shocked.

“We’re obviously sad, but I feel like we gave it a really good go.”

The marquee matchup was supposed to be between the last two AVCA National Players of the Week, Taylor on Nov. 22 and Wilhite on Nov. 29. Instead, the clash came with the Gophers leading 2-1 and Taylor going up to block Wilhite’s tip shot; Wilhite’s foot appeared to cross over the center line and Taylor landed on it, then landed on the court.

In the silence of the arena, the Wahine huddled together.

“Savanah (junior libero Kahakai) brought us in and just reassured us that this game wasn’t going to be easy, with or without her,” freshman setter Norene Iosia said. “We were going to have to fight, no matter who came in. We just knew it was all about our attitude.

“It wasn’t that hard — in practice we do a good job of getting everyone in — but just getting them opportunities where they could all score was hard. But everyone did all they could tonight. They were swinging and that’s all you can ask for.

“It is what it is. We can’t do anything to change it. The team gave it their all, played with so much heart and emotion.”

Shoji went to his bench often, using all 16 on the travel roster. Even with the makeshift lineups, Hawaii hung around, forcing McCutcheon to call a timeout after sophomore hitter McKenna Granato put down three consecutive kills to pull the Wahine to 19-14 in Set 3.

Hawaii again came to within five at 23-18 on freshman hitter Kirsten Sibley’s lone kill, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

Granato finished with 11 kills and Kahakai 17 digs, giving her 1,001 career digs.

For Minnesota, Wilhite had a double-double, adding 11 digs, and Paige Tapp and Molly Lohman each had 10 kills.