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Two titles are undisputed following Hawaii’s sweep of Long Beach State on Saturday.
Two days after claiming its second straight national championship, the Rainbow Warriors were voted the unanimous No. 1 in the final National Volleyball Association/American Volleyball Coaches Association Men’s Division I-II poll of the season.
Long Beach State followed the Warriors in the poll released Monday as the Big West reaffirmed its place atop the conference hierarchy in last week’s National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship in Los Angeles.
The Big West has claimed the national champion each year (not counting 2020’s midseason cancellation) since the conference added men’s volleyball to its lineup for the 2018 season. Long Beach State won the 2018 and ’19 championships and UH captured the two titles since.
As such, this year also marked the second time in those four seasons that the league had members finish 1-2 in the AVCA poll, and most of the key figures in Saturday’s title match at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion are slated to return next season.
“We know we have some good players and literally everybody that’s contributing to our team right now — I think for both teams — are back again next year,” UH coach Charlie Wade said after the Warriors’ sweep of the Beach on Saturday. “So the Big West will be at the top of men’s collegiate volleyball once again.”
The Big West placed five of its six teams in this year’s final Top 15 poll, with UC Santa Barbara finishing at No. 8, UC San Diego at No. 10 and UC Irvine at No. 13.
The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation also had five teams in the poll, led by No. 4 UCLA. No. 3 Ball State topped the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association’s four representatives. No. 6 Penn State was the lone Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association member in the poll.
Hawaii (27-5) finished at No.1 for the third time in the history of the poll, joining the 2002 and 2021 teams. It was also the program’s 19th appearance in the Top 5 of the final poll.
After being voted No. 1 in the preseason poll, the Warriors held the top ranking for the season’s first four weeks. They slipped to No. 3 after dropping two matches at Ball State in late January, then to No. 4 following a loss at UC San Diego in early March. They held steady for seven weeks before jumping back to No. 1 following a sweep of Long Beach State (21-6) in the Big West tournament final, receiving 11 of 19 first-place votes.
They completed their run at a repeat with wins over North Greenville, Ball State and Long Beach State in the NCAA Tournament.
UH and Long Beach State split their four meetings this season, and Saturday’s match marked the ninth postseason meeting between the teams. UH took a 5-4 lead in the postseason series with the 25-22, 25-21, 25-20 win. LBSU holds a 50-47 edge overall.
“I think what it says more than anything is the quality of both of these programs over time,” Long Beach State coach Alan Knipe said on Saturday. “There’s a lot of faces that have changed on both sides of the net, but the quality of volleyball is really, really high by a lot of young players out there in their first experience playing in the championship.
“I think it bodes really well for the Big West and men’s volleyball throughout the country. These two programs have been doing some really big things, and I think there will be a lot of big matches to come.”
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