In the four-act drama Hawaii and Long Beach State played out this spring, the third proved to be a pivotal point in the Rainbow Warriors’ season.

The Warriors and Beach already had a shared history as protagonists under the brightest lights in collegiate men’s volleyball, including meetings for the Big West and national championships in 2019.

Even matches without title implications elevated the rivalry, such as last year’s five-set “noise-gate” marathon at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.

When the series resumed this season, Long Beach State claimed the first two meetings, both in four tightly contested sets, at the Walter Pyramid to set the stage for two more postseason showdowns.

Following the series in Long Beach, the Warriors recovered to win two matches against UC Santa Barbara and two more at UC Irvine before returning to Manoa to host the Big West Championship as the second seed.

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Hawaii’s stakes for the conference tournament escalated when losses by then-No. 1 UCLA and No. 2 Penn State in the MPSF and EIVA tournaments all but erased UH’s hopes of an at-large spot to the National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship had the Warriors fallen short of the conference title and the Big West automatic bid.

While the at-large implications were thrown into chaos, the Warriors entered the week with a singular focus.

“We didn’t even talk about any other scenario, not one time did I bring it up or did we talk about it at all. It was control our own destiny. We win we’re in,” UH coach Charlie Wade said in the post-tournament press conference.

“We’ve said before, we know there’s gonna be a match played that will determine who is representing the league in the NCAA Tournament. We knew we had to be in that match and we knew we had to win it. That’s the only way we ensure we that had a chance to defend our championship.”

The Warriors swept past UC Santa Barbara 25-18, 26-24, 25-14 in the semifinals to set up the third meeting with Long Beach State, which held off surging UC Irvine 22-25, 25-23, 25-19, 29-27 in the opener of the doubleheader.

With the largest crowd of the season in the arena for the April 23 final, a compelling storyline within the overall drama of the evening would emerge.

Hawaii opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias had struggled through his roughest series of the season in UH’s trip to Long Beach. The sophomore was benched in both matches and finished the weekend with nine kills against 10 errors in 30 total attacks in UH’s losses to the Beach. He bounced back to hit .434 with 76 kills and 13 errors over the next four matches entering the Big West final.

Long Beach State freshman Alex Nikolov, the eventual AVCA National Player of the Year, hit .382 and served up five aces against UH three weeks earlier. In his first encounter with UH in the Sheriff Center, the freshman became the focal point of the crowd’s derision after he and Mouchlias traded glares through the net after blocks.

Long Beach State scored the first three points of the final, but that would be the largest margin of an opening set that featured 16 ties and five lead changes. UH twice survived set points for the Beach before a review detected a touch on Spyros Chakas’ kill to give the Warriors set point and an LBSU net violation gave UH the lead in the match.

The second set followed much the same script, with the Beach leading early and UH coming back to this time fight off three set points. With the Warriors down 26-25, Mouchlias extended the set with a kill off the block, teamed with Guilherme Voss on a block, then hammered another kill to give UH the 28-26 decision and a two-set advantage.

The key swing of the third set was delivered by Kana‘i Akana, who put together a five-point service run to turn a two-point deficit into a 14-11 lead. The Beach closed to within a point on four occasions, but the Warriors were able to trade sideouts and secure the title and the NCAA berth when Chakas powered a kill off the Beach block to close out UH’s 27-25, 28-26, 25-23 victory.

Chakas finished with 16 kills, as did Mouchlias, on a night of personal redemption against the Beach. Nikolov finished with a match-high 19 kills with one more meeting with the Warriors yet to come.

“It would be nice to play them on a neutral court and see what happens then. That would be fun,” LBSU coach Alan Knipe said in a bit of foreshadowing after the match. “It seems like we’ve been playing each other’s gyms in big moments for many, many years in a row now. We haven’t seen each other in a neutral gym. That would be kind of fun.”