Dalton Solbrig is a smart guy.

Really smart.

Would-have-a-4.0-except-for-that-dang-A-minus-freshman-year smart.

But his wisdom was questioned when it came down to his choice of college, both of which had a large “H” as its athletic logo.

Hawaii and Harvard.

Solbrig, from Lindenhurst, Ill., was living in the middle of his choices: One path 1,028 miles to the east, the other 4,224 miles to the west.

Advice was all around him, including from an assistant coach who was recruiting him.

“I found out about his academics and I told him you should think about your future after volleyball,” said Jeff Hall, then the Hawaii men’s assistant coach. “I told him he should go to Harvard.”

But, as happens often with a middle child, Solbrig wanted to prove something. He wanted to challenge himself as well as the notion that volleyball players raised outside the hotbeds of Hawaii and California were somehow children of a lesser volleyball god.

Solbrig chose Hawaii because of its marine biology program, the goal to become a marine animal veterinarian. He chose Hawaii because of its passion for the sport he loved, the goal now being a pro contract.

“This was about as far as I could go and still be in the U.S.,” the 6-foot-6 senior middle blocker said as top-ranked Hawaii prepared for this week’s NCAA tournament at Long Beach State. “There’s always been a chip on my shoulder, the ‘just some kid from the Midwest’ chip that made me push harder and made me better over the years.

“There’s a little pressure off our backs now that we’re in the (NCAA) tournament, but there’s still a lot of pressure. We’ve won three of the four tournaments on our schedule. We need to win one more.”

Solbrig has played a big, often quiet, role in the Warriors’ success this season. His game has been as steady as it has been efficient; he’s hitting .572 for the year and has never had more than two hitting errors in any of the 29 matches.

Solbrig credits assistant coach Milan Zarkovic with his improvement. They worked to take advantage of Solbrig’s athleticism, quickness and smarts, which includes the step-out play normally seen only in the women’s game.

On April 20 in the Big West tournament championship, he was near perfect against Long Beach State, with nine kills on 10 swings, hitting .900. The biggest two came at the end of 2 hours and 50 minutes against the 49ers in Set 5, his quickness beating the block for his eighth kill that had the sold-out Stan Sheriff Center crowd rising for aloha ball at 14-8, his last quickly ending it on an overpass of senior setter Joe Worsley’s serve.

“It had a lot of meaning for me, a lot of emotions for sure,” Solbrig said. “It was the last time that this group competes together on this court.

“We don’t know if we’ll see Long Beach again. We both have a match to play before. We’ve got to win ours (against USC or Lewis) and they’ve got to win theirs (against Pepperdine or Princeton). It’s one game at a time.”

It took a while for Solbrig to find a place in the Warriors lineup. Recruited as an opposite/maybe setter, playing time was nowhere in sight when he walked into the first open gym and there was a 6-8 freshman opposite named Stijn van Tilburg.

When fellow freshman Patrick Gasman, a 6-10 middle, broke his leg, coach Charlie Wade asked Solbrig if he could play middle.

He asked if it meant he’d be on the travel roster, and when Wade said yes, Solbrig said he could play the position he had not played since freshman year in high school.

Still, it took until last season before Solbrig broke into the starting lineup permanently. He is scheduled to make his 57th consecutive start in Thursday’s NCAA semifinal.

“When I was recruiting him, I saw a really good athlete,” said Hall, now the Hawaii beach volleyball coach. “I thought he could contribute, but I didn’t realize he’d become as good as he is.

“That’s all on him, all his hard work.”

Solbrig chronicled his journey in an article on the UH athletics website, writing that his life has been “a steady climb of goals, never looking back to accept any of them as the final destination.” He wanted to play in college, make the travel roster, be on the court, be a starter … and, perhaps by the end of this week, be an NCAA champion.

“No regrets,” he said of his choice of schools.

It has turned out to be one of the smartest decisions he could make.