LONG BEACH, Calif. >> Hawaii began Big West Conference play Friday night with perhaps its most frustrating performance of the season.
The Rainbow Wahine, ranked 11th nationally, struggled against rebuilding Long Beach State before emerging with a 25-16, 21-25, 25-21, 25-16 victory in front of season-high 2,012 at the Walter Pyramid.
UH (11-1, 1-0) ends its extended stay on the mainland today against Cal State Northridge after beating the Beach (3-11, 0-2), a team that lost five consecutive matches and 10 successive sets with a roster of seven sophomores and six freshmen entering Friday night’s match.
“We’ve been on the road for 10 days, now,” UH coach Robyn Ah Mow said. “We’re all females. We get under each other’s skins. It’s been a long week here. We’ve been here since Monday, and finally we have to play the match. It’s been a little bit tense.”
Freshman Hanna Hellvig tied her season best with 17 kills. Norene Iosia finished with 20 assists and 15 digs for her fifth double-double of the season while serving two aces. Iosia now ranks 10th on UH’s career list with 107 aces.
Hawaii has not lost a conference opener since 1994.
The Beach stymied Hawaii’s attack in the middle two sets.
After hitting .367 in Set 1, the Wahine hit just .083 from the start of Set 2 to the middle of Set 3, when the hosts held a 16-14 lead.
“I keep telling my girls, ‘The lines are open,’ ” Ah Mow said. “They give us 3 feet of line and we keep hitting it cross-court. Every block was cross-court. Our middles weren’t hitting around the block. We didn’t do a good job.”
With Hawaii failing to adjust, Long Beach matched the visitors block for block for the first three sets. Each team had seven blocks after three sets before UH finished with a 10-8 edge, the Wahine’s eighth match in double-digit blocks.
“Whoever came in did a good job,” Iosia said. “The vibe of their team was always just pushing us to be better. They did a good job of capitalizing on simple plays.”
Hellvig was impressed with “their way of finding angles around our block,” she said. “They’re really good. Our block game really wasn’t that good and they definitely took advantage of that.”
As a result, the Beach turned a 10-6 deficit in Set 2 into a 16-13 lead before Katie Kennedy’s wide tip attempt enabled UH to tie the score at 18. But Kennedy and Kashauna Williams then led a 5-0 blitz that put Long Beach ahead 23-18. Kennedy pounded two kills and joined Yi-Zhi Xue on a block, with Williams contributing a kill and a solo block.
Two factors in Set 3 proved pivotal. The first was the play of freshman middle Tiffany Westerberg, who replaced freshman middle Amber Igiede during the Beach’s late surge in Set 2. Westerberg won two tips at the net late in that set, then contributed two kills and two block assists in Set 3. But the Canadian national’s influence extended beyond statistics.
“She brought a lot of energy to the team coming in, which was amazing,” Hellvig said. “I’m super impressed. She definitely was a big part of our win.”
Iosia elaborated: “She did a good job of being aggressive at the net and being very vocal on the court, as well.”
The second critical factor was the timeout Ah Mow called with the Beach holding a 16-14 lead.
“We’ve been giving them 12 to 13 points a game on just errors alone, our errors,” Ah Mow said. “If I would have let it go, they probably would have gotten five more points on us. So I called a timeout fast and let them regroup.”
“She told us to pick our faces up,” Hellvig said. “That was pretty much it. We had to take care of our assignments. I think everyone just woke up and said, ‘Let’s do this.’”
With Long Beach holding an 18-17 lead, the Wahine went on a 6-0 spree that gave them a 23-18 advantage. Iosia unleashed a hard jump serve that dipped and rotated rapidly. It enabled her to serve two aces, one of them during that spurt.
“Mainly, I was trying to move the passers, either side to side or move them back,” she said, “and then just trying to go for the pins, either right back or left back, and just try to get them out of system.”
The timeout also invigorated Hellvig and UH’s offense, which did not commit an attack error for the rest of Set 3 and compiled a .533 percentage for the rest of the match. Hellvig amassed eight of her kills after that timeout.
“I saw the block moving out to the line a bit more, since I had tried to hit line a few times,” the Swedish national said. “So I saw the opportunity to go sharp cross-court. That worked out for me. Then I gained my confidence back, and it just kept going.”
Junior middle Skyler Williams and junior hitter Brooke Van Sickle each added seven kills, and senior setter Bailey Choy contributed 16 assists. For Long Beach State, Kashauna Williams finished with 14 kills, while senior middle Xue had nine kills, two solo blocks and three block assists.
BIG WEST VOLLEYBALL
Conference Overall
W L PCT. GB W L
UCSB 2 0 1.000 — 12 1
Cal Poly 2 0 1.000 — 9 5
Hawaii 1 0 1.000 1/2 11 1
UC Davis 1 0 1.000 1/2 9 5
UC Riverside 1 0 1.000 1/2 5 7
CSUN 1 1 .500 1 6 8
CS Fullerton 0 2 .000 2 8 5
UC Irvine 0 2 .000 2 3 11
LBSU 0 3 .000 3 3 12
Friday
Hawaii def. Long Beach State, 25-16, 21-25, 25-21, 25-16
UC Santa Barbara def. UC Irvine, 25-19, 25-11, 25-21
Cal Poly def. CS Fullerton, 25-14, 25-21, 25-15
Today
Hawaii at CS Northridge, 4 p.m.
UC Santa Barbara at CS Fullerton
Cal Poly at UC Irvine
Sunday
UC Riverside at UC Davis
