And then there were none.
When Penn State middle blocker Toby Ezeonu pounded a kill and unleashed an extended roar, Hawaii’s lengthy winning streaks evaporated, as did the Rainbow Warriors’ status as the lone undefeated team in NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball.
After spraying 11 service errors in the first set, the No. 3 Nittany Lions kept their deliveries in-bounds and kept the top-ranked Warriors off balance in a 21-25, 25-23, 25-21, 25-23 victory to cap the second day of the Outrigger Volleyball Invitational.
Penn State outside hitters Michal Kowal and Cal Fisher put away 12 kills each and Ezeonu went 10-for-15 with five blocks as the Nittany Lions ended UH’s 25-match overall winning streak and 29-match run at home.
A crowd of 5,266 at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center left in relative quiet after UH’s first defeat since April 2, 2022, at Long Beach State and first at home since falling to UC San Diego in five sets in the Big West tournament semifinals on April 23, 2021.
“This group hasn’t faced a lot of adversity for a while, so we gotta buckle down and see how much we got left in the tank tomorrow and come back and play better,” UH coach Charlie Wade said.
No fans were in the arena for the five-set defeat to UCSD due to pandemic restrictions, so the loss was also UH’s first in front of a home crowd since dropping the opener of a series against BYU on March 5, 2020.
The Warriors (16-1) will look to bounce back when they close the tournament today against No. 2 UCLA, with close to a sellout crowd expected for the first meeting between the longtime rivals since 2018.
“We gotta think next game now,” UH setter Jakob Thelle said. “This game is past. There’s lessons learned from this game and we gotta take that into the next game and bring it. Nothing is over yet. We’re just halfway in the season, so anything is possible.
“Good teams get beat by good teams, that’s just how it is. It’s our chance tomorrow to come back.”
“The beauty of this kind of tournament is you get to play again tomorrow,” Wade added. “Typically you’re playing in a tournament format, you lose, you’re done. We get to play again tomorrow against a really good team and we’re looking forward to it.”
UH opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias led UH with 16 kills in 30 attacks and Spyros Chakas finished with 14, but the Warriors hit a season-low .250 and set a season high with 20 attack errors.
Hawaii entered the match hitting .383 for the season, with a low of .297 in a match at Belmont Abbey, and had gone over .400 in each of the previous four matches.
Penn State’s erratic serving early on helped UH rally to win the first set despite posting just one kill in the first 34 overall points in the match and hitting .000 for the set.
Once the Nittany Lions dialed in its serves, they kept Thelle on the move and off the net and kept the UH attack out of rhythm for much of the night.
“We have a really good setter and we can run the middles and the fast bic, so teams have to get us off the net,” Wade said. “And our passing wasn’t great tonight and their serving was at times.
“We battled back and made it close, but at the end they played better than us pretty much in every phase from the jump. A lot of veteran guys on the team, and fifth- and sixth-year guys, and they played like it.”
Fisher, who had just one kill in a five-set loss to UCLA on Thursday, contributed three of Penn State’s seven aces and also had 10 digs and Brett Wildman finished with 11 kills.
“Early on there were a little bit of nerves and the noise and trying to get comfortable with the environment,” Penn State coach Mark Pavlik said. “We are who we are and we can play some pretty good volleyball and the guys worked their way through it.”
UCLA (19-1) will enter tonight’s Outrigger finale as the lone 2-0 team in the tournament. The Bruins eased past Purdue Fort Wayne 25-20, 25-21, 25-16 in Friday’s first match.
“It’s always fun in a volleyball setting when you can have a crowd as enthusiastic as the one here in Hawaii,” said UCLA coach John Speraw, who played in the first Outrigger in 1995. “I hope we keep in perspective and I think we will. We have a pretty mature group of guys and we’ll go out there and play ball.”
