With a powerful tomahawk chop of the ball at the net and onto the Taraflex to end the Late Show, senior Dalton Solbrig delivered the University of Hawaii men’s volleyball program to its first conference championship Saturday night and on to the NCAA Championships next month.

In the 2 hour, 50 minute process, the Rainbow Warriors exorcised, for one raucous night at least, the demon that had haunted them with a 25-15, 25-23, 22-25, 20-25, 15-8 victory over defending conference and national champion Long Beach State in the Big West Conference Tournament just before 11 p.m.

Then the sellout crowd of 9,543 at the Stan Sheriff Center, some of whom had been on the premises for nearly six hours, stood and belted out “We are the champions,” as the ’Bows donned Big West Champions t-shirts.

They became the first UH men’s volleyball team to win the championship of any conference — Mountain Pacific Sports Federation or Big West — something that had eluded even the Yuval Katz (1995) and Costas Theochardis (2001, ’02) teams as the ’Bows had gone 0-5 in previous conference championship matches.

The ’Bows learn their opponent and seeding for the NCAA Tournament this morning on the 7 a.m. NCAA Selection Show on NCAA.com.

A year after they were passed over by the NCAA for an at-large berth, the ’Bows cemented a place in the seven-team field by earning the automatic bid of the nation’s most powerful conference.

The only drama today will be whether the ’Bows (27-2) go back to Long Beach State’s Walter Pyramid, the site of the tournament, as the top seed or second to Long Beach (26-2) for a possible fourth meeting in 21 days.

But they will go having sent a powerful message, giving the 49ers something to think about on that five-hour ride home and in the intervening days.

Until Saturday, the 49ers, for all the closeness of their recent meetings — and they had each scored 201 points over the two earlier matches — had managed a frustrating mastery of the ’Bows. The Beach won the two previous five-set meetings and 8 of the past 9 meetings overall. In both of the prior two Big West Tournaments the 49ers had prevailed over UH.

The starring roles in this turnaround drama belonged to one-time walk-on Colton Cowell of Makawao, who had a career high 18 kills, and senior Stijn van Tilburg, who nailed 25.

The sellout swelled the ’Bows’ nation-leading crowd count (tickets distributed) to an average of 5,210, the most since 2003, when UH averaged 5,414.

What they came for and loudly beseeched the ’Bows to deliver on was to put away The Beach.

The ’Bows could have — and should have — made quick work of this in the third set. But seven uncharacteristic service errors, the last several prompting groans from the crowd, prevented them from doing so as Long Beach hung on 25-22.

Then, in the fourth set, an out of rotation violation and net violation doomed the ’Bows to a 25-20 loss and the necessity of a winner-take-all fifth set.

With UH up 14-8 and senior Joe Worsley standing confidently at the service line, the crowd rose for aloha ball and Solbrig delivered the long-awaited exclamation point.

Suddenly a night that seemed like it might never end was one none of the UH partisans wanted to see come to a conclusion.

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