Fifty-six days. That’s how long it had been since the Hawaii beach volleyball team tasted defeat.

On Saturday, the third-seeded Rainbow Wahine left the courts at Gulf Shores, Ala., with the same bad taste, again losing to Florida State in the winners bracket semifinal of the NCAA championship tournament. Unlike the loss to the Seminoles back on March 10 at Huntington Beach, Calif. — which sent Hawaii off on a school-record 32-match win streak — Saturday’s 3-2 defeat sent the SandBows into today’s elimination match at 5:30 a.m. with top-seeded UCLA, the only other team to defeat Hawaii this season.

The winner of the match advances to face Florida State in a winner-take-all final at 8 a.m. In what is called a technical crossover, the format changes from double elimination the first two days to single elimination the final day.

“Sure we’re disappointed, and if it were to be played over again, I think there would be a different outcome,” Hawaii coach Jeff Hall said in a telephone call. “It was a matter of execution at the end.

“We had leads, then kind of stumbled. For me, we lost to a team that wanted it a little bit more.”

A national TV audience got all the drama it wanted and more, with four of the five flights going to a third set. The only one that didn’t was Flight 4, where Amy Ozee and Ari Homayun swept Molly McBain and Brooke Kuhlman 22-20, 21-16, giving the SandBows a 1-0 lead.

The Seminoles tied the dual with a win at Flight 1, with Vanessa Freire and Tory Paranagua holding off Emily Maglio and Ka’iwi Schucht, 21-12, 15-21, 15-12. Hawaii regained the lead when Carly Kan and Laurel Weaver rallied past Sara Putt and Macy Jerger at Flight 3, 17-21, 21-19, 15-11.

The SandBows appeared poised to clinch the dual at Flight 2 with an 8-4 lead in Set 3, but Morgan Martin and Lea Monkhouse couldn’t hold on, losing 14-21, 21-16, 15-11 to Katie Horton and Hailey Luke.

As happened in Friday’s match with second-seeded Pepperdine, the outcome hinged on Flight 5. It went deuce in the first two sets, Francesca Goncalves and Madison Fitzpatrick taking Set 1 24-22 and Paige Dreeuws and Hannah Zalopany tying it with a 23-21 Set 2 win.

Unlike Friday, when Dreeuws-Zalopany pulled out Set 3 15-13, Goncalves-Fitzpatrick closed it out, 15-12.

“Sure there was a lot of pressure on them,” Hall said. “But you have a senior (Zalopany) who has been in that situation before. … They gave it all they had.

“This match was great for our sport, great for TV, not so great for the SandBows.”

The only given today is that there will be a first-time collegiate beach volleyball champion. Florida State’s best finish was runner-up to USC in 2016, the final four that had UCLA with its program-best showing of third and Hawaii fourth. The SandBows were third last year with a victory over FSU that had the Seminoles end up fourth.

Hawaii will see UCLA today, the Bruins needing to win twice on Saturday to advance. UCLA eliminated LSU 3-0, then rival USC 3-1. USC had advanced on Saturday with a 3-2 victory over Pepperdine, ending the coaching career of the legendary Nina Matthies, who had announced her retirement prior to the start of the season.

Hawaii swept UCLA 5-0 in its season opener on Feb. 24 at the Ching Complex, then lost 3-2 the next day. The Bruins won 4-1 on March 8 in Westwood, Calif.

“I totally expect it to go down to the wire,” UCLA coach Stein Metzger, a Punahou School graduate, said in a postmatch interview.