No. 2 Hawaii rolled into Brigham Young’s Smith Fieldhouse on Thursday with a 17-match winning streak, all 17 coming in straight sets. The Rainbow Warriors rolled out in the cold Provo night after 65 minutes of competition with their 18th consecutive sweep, extending both the program’s best start to 18-0 and the NCAA sets-won record to 54 via a 25-10, 25-19, 25-18 victory over McKendree in the BYU Invite.
Senior hitter Stijn van Tilburg matched Hawaii’s record with 18 kills and no errors, hitting .750 on 24 attempts. Junior opposite Rado Parapunov, the reigning national player of the week, added 14 kills with three of the team’s four aces and the match-ending solo block.
This was the third straight match in Smith that van Tilburg led the Warriors in kills. The other times were in 2017 in two losses to the host Cougars.
“Stijn played really good,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said in a telephone call. “We played pretty good overall. There were a couple of transition points in the second set that were a little loose.
“(McKendree was) really good defensively, touched a lot of balls on the block, a lot of balls in the back row. Give credit to them. Tomorrow we want to continue to get acclimated and have another good night against another good team.”
Hawaii next sees EIVA leader Princeton (10-10) today at noon. In Thursday’s second match, the Tigers nearly pulled off an upset of the eighth-ranked Cougars (12-6), BYU prevailing 19-25, 25-14, 22-25, 25-21, 15-10.
Saturday’s tournament finale with the Warriors will be the Cougars’ last home match of the regular season. Tickets are scarce, with a sellout of the 5,000-seat gym expected.
The Warriors, who have not won in Smith since 2003 — losing 15 straight to the Cougars — had some difficulty with their services against the Panthers (9-9). Hawaii had four aces to 11 service errors, several of which, according to Wade, “were guys trying to put the ball in play, backed off and missed. But it was the first night and everyone was getting a feel for the gym. Our serving subs kept their serves in.”
Subs James Anastassiades, Brett Rosenmeier and Jakob Thelle had no errors in a combined 10 attempts.
McKendree, out of the MIVA, had two aces and 10 errors. The Panthers were led by Brendon Dunn’s 12 kills.
Hawaii, the nation’s leader in hitting percentage (.491), hit .468 Thursday to McKendree’s .135.
In Set 1, six of the Panthers’ 10 points came on Warriors service errors. Set 2 was much closer, with five lead changes and 10 ties, the last at 17. Hawaii went on an 8-2 run to close it out.
Junior middle Patrick Gasman and Parapunov each were in on five of the Warriors’ nine blocks. Hawaii finished with a 9-3.5 edge in stuffs and a 30-20 edge in digs, with sophomore libero Gage Worsley finishing with a match-high nine.
