No. 3 Hawaii makes a quick sweep

Got malasadas?

There was plenty of time for the Stan Sheriff Center crowd to pick up some, maybe some Portuguese bean soup as well, at the nearby Punahou Carnival on Friday night. No. 3 Hawaii needed just 90 minutes to pick up a sweep of pro team Academy United 25-20, 25-16, 25-22 in the second match of the inaugural Waikiki Beachcomber Classic men’s volleyball tournament.

Junior All-American Stijn van Tilburg finished with 12 kills and was in on five of the team’s 11 blocks as the Rainbow Warriors head into today’s 7 p.m. finale against Thompson Rivers as the lone undefeated team in the round-robin event. As 1,903 watched, senior libero Tui Tuileta had 10 digs and junior setter Joe Worsley 40 assists for Hawaii against the National Volleyball Association squad.

“It was fun, playing against a bunch of first-team All-Americans, some pretty veteran guys,” said Worsley, who had the Warriors hitting .400. “We knew it would be a different kind of game, they weren’t going to be intimidated by the crowd.

“I was pretty happy with the performance overall. We were disappointed by our blocking last Sunday against UCLA (a four-set loss) and that was the main focus all week in practice. We wanted to be aggressive the entire game.”

Academy United — which got 12 kills from Tony Ciarelli, a former national player of the year at USC — meets Lees-McRae in today’s 4 p.m. match. The Bobcats out of Conference Carolinas defeated Canada West member Thompson Rivers 33-31, 25-27, 25-23, 25-19 in Friday’s first match.

After using all 17 players on the roster in Thursday’s sweep of Lees-McRae, Warriors coach Charlie Wade used 11 Friday. The biggest changes were bringing in sophomore Austin Matautia in at hitter in Sets 2 and 3, and moving van Tilburg from the left to opposite in Set 3.

“Here we are in February and we haven’t had a lot of matches where the ‘A’ side has played together all that much,” Wade said. “This was an opportunity to work on some things against a really good team.

“We’re still very much a work in progress. We’ve been working on blocking, and that (Academy United) is not a team that will get blocked out. It’s not about the (blocking) statistics, it’s about how do we look blocking.”

Hawaii looked pretty good with four blocks while running away in Set 2 and five while holding off a late run by Academy United in Set 3. Sophomore middle Patrick Gasman was in on five stuffs and junior middle Dalton Solbrig was in on five to go along with eight kills and the match-ending ace.

The visitors out of San Francisco had three players with local ties: former Hawaii hitter Nemanja Komar (4 kills) and Punahou products Riley and Maddison McKibbin, both of whom played at USC and are the sons of former Rainbow Wahine Diana McInerny McKibbin, a member of the 1979 AIAW championship team. Riley had 30 assists at setter and Maddison six kills on the outside.

“I never got to play that much here when I was at SC,” Maddison McKibbin said. “So this was kind of like the first time that I ever got to play at UH against UH. It was so much fun playing again with Tony (Ciarelli), and Riley and I are always on the same page.

“Being able to come out here and compete against a team like Hawaii, a top-three team in the country, was fun. We had nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

Lees-McRae 3, Thompson Rivers 1

Wes Rogman put down 14 kills and the Bobcats got their regular setter, Joseph Valadez, back after he missed Thursday with illness. Valadez finished with 31 assists and five of the team’s 15 aces.

TRU got 14 kills from opposite Tim Edge and 11 digs from libero Isaac Smit.