Evan Silberstein went through last week confident in Hawaii’s chances of appearing in the bracket for the National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship.
The Rainbow Wahine head coach’s thoughts were confirmed early Sunday morning when UH was awarded an at-large berth in the 17-team field for this week’s NCAA tournament in Gulf Shores, Ala.
The BeachBows (27-8) were slotted as the 11th seed in the field and will face No. 6 seed Loyola Marymount at 11 a.m. on Friday in a rematch of their opening-round match last year.
The BeachBows had a week to contemplate their postseason fate following a third-place finish in the Big West Beach Volleyball Championship in Waikiki, and used the time to recharge and prepare in anticipation of the program’s sixth NCAA tournament appearance.
“This week has been really nice because we could get a little more time off and let bodies and minds and hearts mend the way they need to so that we can be ready for ’Bama,” Silberstein said. “We feel rested, we feel excited. Another shot at it I think is really exciting for the group so we’re stoked to get them out there and we’ll be ready to go.”
UH was ranked in the top 10 of the AVCA poll for eight weeks before slipping to 11th after dropping two matches as the top seed in the Big West tournament on April 30 at Queen’s Beach.
The BeachBows practiced at Queen’s and on campus at the Ching Complex during the bye week and will depart Honolulu on Tuesday, spending a night in Texas on their way to Alabama.
The itinerary figures to be far less hectic than last year, when they closed the Big West Tournament in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on a Saturday evening, traveled directly to Alabama and were swept by LMU in Alabama the following Wednesday.
“It’s exciting we get to leave from Hawaii because it fills us up with the mana of home,” Silberstein said.
“We try to prioritize rest and acclimating the best we can to the time-zone change. So this feels like the best route for that and we’re excited to have that option.”
Loyola Marymount (28-8) captured its fourth consecutive West Coast Conference Tournament championship to earn an automatic bid into this year’s tournament.
The event’s format will be a single-elimination tournament after using a double-elimination bracket in past years.
The tournament opens on Wednesday with No. 16 seed UT-Martin taking on No. 17. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi for the right to face top-seeded UCLA on Friday.
Big West champion Long Beach State is seeded ninth and will face No. 8 California in the round of 16.
The winner of the UH-LMU match will face No. 3 USC, the defending national champion, or No. 14 Georgia State in the quarterfinals on Saturday.
All eight matches on Friday will be televised on ESPNU. The quarterfinal and semifinal matches on Saturday will be shown on ESPN2. The championship match is set for 6 a.m. on Sunday on ESPN.
