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Hawaii ended the first of two quick road trips with a speedy sweep of Saturday’s series finale at Cal State Northridge.
Efficient offense early and dominant defense late powered the second-ranked Rainbow Warriors to a 25-17, 25-18, 25-15 sweep of No. 14 CSUN in just 88 minutes at Premier America Credit Union Arena in Northridge, Calif.
A day after hitting a season-best .478 in the opening match of the series, the Rainbow Warriors (20-2, 3-1 Big West) hit .500 through two sets in the rematch and put down 10 blocks in the third set alone to close out the series sweep over the host Matadors (12-9, 1-3).
“Pretty good work for us to come in and get out of there in six straight sets and really keep getting better as the weekend went on,” UH coach Charlie Wade said in a phone interview.
The Warriors return to Honolulu today after hitting .432 in their first road series in more than a month with 74 kills against 13 attack errors, with seven coming in Friday’s 25-22, 25-14, 25-18 win and just six committed on Saturday.
Given the mix of lineups Wade has used throughout the season, often necessitated by injuries or illness, he pointed out that “the first unit has not played together much this late in the season. So I think we’re still getting better and will continue to.”
The series sweep pushed UH into a tie with Long Beach State (14-3, 3-1) for second place in the Big West standings, with the Warriors and Beach a game behind UC Irvine (14-6, 4-0). The Warriors also reached 20 wins for the 12th time in program history and the fifth time in Wade’s 14 seasons as head coach.
A quirk in the schedule will have the Warriors spending a few days on campus before heading back to SoCal for a series at UC Santa Barbara (5-13, 1-4) on Friday and Saturday.
UH opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias put away a match-high 13 kills with one error in 23 attacks for a .522 hitting performance and was in on five blocks. Outside hitter Chaz Galloway added seven kills in 14 swings, seven digs and two solo blocks and ended the night with an ace on match point.
“The bench was like, ‘Just send it,’ so that’s what I did,” Galloway said of the walk-off ace.
Outside hitter Spyros Chakas added six kills and a season-high four aces. Middle blocker Guilherme Voss finished with six kills and was in on six of UH’s season-high 13.5 blocks.
Setter Jakob Thelle distributed 27 assists with two kills and six digs. The Warriors were particularly sharp in the second set, with 15 kills and no errors in 21 attempts for a .714 performance.
“We knew we had to play better and try harder than last night,” said Mouchlias. who had three kills in a 7-1 UH run midway through the second set. “And we were just on fire — serving, blocking and obviously hitting.”
While Wade wasn’t all that pleased with UH’s seven service errors in the first set, the Warriors’ work from the service line as the match progressed contributed to their block numbers at the net.
Mouchlias was in on three consecutive blocks in a 5-0 UH run to open the third set and said, “It was mostly because Jakob was serving, so it was pretty easy.”
The Warriors keyed in on CSUN opposite Kyle Hobus and limited the Matadors’ kills leader to eight against 11 errors in 31 attacks. Outside hitter Griffin Walters posted eight kills on 20 swings and the Matadors hit .085 for the match. UH’s block kept CSUN to negative-.182 in the third set.
“They were out of system, so it was pretty easy to get hands over the net,” Galloway said.
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