A chill in the gym did little to cool off Hawaii’s attack in the second-ranked Rainbow Warriors’ sweep of No. 14 Cal State Northridge on Friday.
In his post-match comments, UH coach Charlie Wade noted colder than usual conditions in Premier America Credit Union Arena after the Warriors put together their hottest hitting performance of the season in UH’s 25-22, 25-14, 25-18 victory.
“They came out playing really efficiently … and it was cold in that building,” Wade said. “As the building heated up and we heated up, we continued to get better.”
UH outside hitter Chaz Galloway’s team-high 12th kill closed out the 100-minute victory and the Warriors hit a season-high .478 with just seven attack errors in 67 attempts in their first road match since Feb. 11.
The Warriors (19-2, 2-1 Big West) and Matadors (12-8, 1-2) meet again today to close the series.
The bulk of setter Jakob Thelle’s 31 assists went to UH’s pin hitters, with Galloway hitting .500 on his 20 attacks while posting his third consecutive match with double-digit kills. Outside hitter Spyros Chakas finished with nine kills and opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias had seven of his eight kills in the second set.
Thelle contributed two kills and one of UH’s five aces, raising his career total to 115 to pass Rado Parapunov for fourth on UH’s career list.
Kyle Hobus led CSUN with 12 kills and Griffin Walters added 10 for the Matadors, who hit .346 while matching sideouts with UH for much of the first set. But the Matadors cooled off considerably in hitting .182 over the final two sets to finish at .222.
Middle blocker Guilherme Voss was in on five of UH’s 10 blocks, Mouchlias assisted on four and Wade credited the Warriors’ work from the service line for contributing to the defensive effort.
“It just takes a while to get the timing down on the block and we served better,” Wade said. “(CSUN) started off (passing) really well and running the middle and that’s pretty effective for everybody. Then we were able to put some service pressure on, got them off the net and let the block and defense get set and obviously we were pretty good at it.”
UH and CSUN traded sideouts for much of a first set that was tied 16 times, the last at 20-20. A CSUN net violation on Galloway’s swing gave the Warriors the lead, UH middle blocker Cole Hogland hammered an overpass off a Mouchlias serve and Galloway scored again off the CSUN block to give UH a 23-20 lead.
CSUN closed to within a point before a service error gave UH set point and Chakas put down an overpass of Galloway’s serve to end the set.
The Warriors stayed hot in the second set despite a delay to inflate the balls being used in the match.
Wade said Voss noticed a ball was flat on one of his service turns and “Guilherme came back to serve again in the second set and he pushed his thumbs into the ball.”
Wade, who theorized the cold had something to do with the issue, alerted the officials and the match was held up while they made sure the balls in rotation were properly inflated.
When play resumed, the Warriors continued to pump up their numbers while hitting .609 with 15 kills and one error in 23 attempts. Mouchlias and Galloway combined for 12 of UH’s 15 kills in the set.
“It was nice to see us be able to put that kind of performance out there and really take control of the match,” Wade said.