Hawaii played from behind for the most of the opening set of Saturday’s match against Stanford.
The top-ranked Rainbow Warriors didn’t trail at any point in the next three and rallied past the 14th-ranked Cardinal in the finale of the First Point Volleyball Foundation Collegiate Challenge in Austin, Texas.
UH opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias saw his run of three error-free matches end on his first swing of the match, but he recovered from a slow start to lead the Rainbow Warriors (7-2) with 18 kills on 38 attempts. The sophomore was also in on five of UH’s 131⁄2 blocks in UH’s 19-25, 25-13, 25-19, 25-20 win at a packed Austin Convention Center.
Outside hitter Spyros Chakas added 13 kills and closed the match with his third ace of the night and sophomore Kana’i Akana posted career highs with seven kills and 10 digs.
After committing nine hitting errors in the first set, the Warriors misfired just eight times over the remainder of the match to finish 3-0 in the first collegiate men’s volleyball event in Texas.
“It was a great crowd and the event organizers did an unbelievable job of putting this together,” UH coach Charlie Wade said in a post-match Zoom session. “Really had a Final Four feel to it.”
After dropping the first set to Stanford, UH setter Jakob Thelle turned the momentum of the match with an ace to start a seven-point service turn to open the second set. Chakas had two kills with Thelle back to serve and added an ace in a 7-1 UH surge to open the third set. Chakas, who had a career-high seven aces in Friday’s win over Queens, fired two more in the fourth set.
“Those guys are the first two servers for us, so that means generally they’re going to get at least three turns a set,” Wade said, “and it’s not just the pressure (on opponents), it’s a sustained pressure. You keep getting those guys opportunities to go back there, they’re going to keep cracking it, and if they catch a seam or a sideline we end up scoring.”
Mouchlias hadn’t committed a hitting error in his previous 65 attempts before being blocked by Stanford’s Will Rottman early in the first set. He had four errors in the set as UH hit .083 as a team and dropped a set to Stanford for the first time since 2016, having swept the previous six meetings with the Cardinal.
He had just three errors the rest of the way and the Warriors hit .377 over the final three sets.
“I had a bad first set, I was struggling a lot, but all the guys helped me to get through it and we played some great volleyball after that,” Mouchlias said in a post-match interview on the broadcast from Austin.
“First of all we had to calm down. We made many errors, I made many errors, and so we had to calm ourselves and we just had to play our game.”
Stanford opened the match with a block on UH middle blocker Guilherme Voss, and slowing the Warriors’ middle attack appeared to be an early emphasis for the Cardinal. Stanford middle Ethan Hill sparked the Cardinal with five kills on six swings and was in on three blocks in the opening set.
UH countered by using Voss to draw the Stanford block away from the pins and Thelle got Mouchlias, Chakas and Akana into the flow of the offense.
“They were in a full commit, especially on Guilherme,” Wade said. “We didn’t put enough service pressure on (in the first set), so they liked setting the middle and they were absolutely covering our middles.
“So as we served better we took their middles out of it and once they started fully fronting and committing to Guilherme we just run him away from the back set.”
Thelle finished with 38 assists, six digs and an ace and was in on four blocks. Wade also credited UH’s serve reception for setting the tone for the comeback as libero Brett Sheward and Chakas each handled seven serves without an error.
Sheward, who began his UH career as a setter, anchored the UH defense with 10 digs and complemented Thelle with a season-high seven assists.
“We’re actually trying to get him to go faster on some of those … and isolate the hitters a little more,” Wade said. “But there’s no question, from a libero standpoint, he’s as good as anybody we’ve ever had setting in transition.”
Rottman led Stanford (6-3) with 15 kills on .064 hitting. Hill added 13 kills while hitting .632.
After completing a 12-day road trip, the Warriors are scheduled to return to Manoa today and open a three-match series with Long Island on Tuesday at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
“It’s still a work in progress, but we are making progress for sure,” Wade said.
