Bill Von Osdol, better known as Billy V, said it best afterward. The Michael Buffer of University of Hawaii sports (but more talkative) compared it to heavyweight boxers trading blows.
Sadly for Hawaii fans, near and far, the UCLA Bruins knocked out the Warriors, in the fourth.
One of the greatest runs in UH sports history — maybe the greatest ever — is now exactly that, history … but don’t forget, history can repeat itself.
The Hawaii men’s volleyball team won the national championship in 2021 and 2022. But the Warriors were vanquished in their try for a third consecutive title by a long time nemesis. (Remember who stopped Yuval Katz and the rest of Mike Wilton’s rock stars in the ’90s?)
Even 4,812 miles away from Fairfax, Va., we could feel the vibe coming through all those TV screens at the watch party at Giovanni Pastrami in Waikiki.
The two-time defending national champions rumbled Saturday with the royal family of men’s volleyball and the No. 1 seed in this tournament, pounding away at each other, relentlessly.
The Bruins were clearly the better team in this match, on this day. But — at least on paper — they were evenly matched coming in.
It wasn’t a little guy with a slingshot against a giant bully.
David WAS Goliath.
Ido David, that is, UCLA’s 6-foot-7 sophomore from Israel who dominated with 23 kills in four sets — the first two of which were exhausting, just to watch.
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UCLA needed 28 points to win the first, and the Warriors had to score eight more than normal to even the match — both coming from behind to do it.
If there’s ever been a more intense volleyball set than that second one, someone please send me the video.
UH battled back from a 22-18 deficit, to set point at 24-23. But the Bruins became that monster in the bad dream that refuses to die. They fought off five set points before UH’s Greek connection, Spyros Chakas and Dimitrios Mouchlias, finally spanked back-to-back kills for a 33-31 win.
“Whoever recovered from that was going to have a big advantage,” said Billy V, the emcee at UH home games, and Saturday’s watch party.
Maybe UCLA had fresher legs, since it dispatched Long Beach State in a semifinal sweep Thursday while Hawaii needed five to beat Penn State.
Or maybe the Bruins, a significantly younger team than the Warriors, improved more than UH did since Hawaii beat them in four sets on March 11 — at SimpliFi Arena at the Stan Sheriff Center.
That was during the Outrigger Volleyball Invitational, which turned out to be nearly a complete preview of the final four. It’s also where Hawaii lost its first match in this 29-3 season, to Penn State. The Warriors fell again the next week to the fourth national semifinalist, Long Beach State. But both of those losses were avenged.
So, that strange trend continues … it’s some cosmic rule of the universe that national champions successfully defend their title in this sport — then, that’s it … two and only two. It’s been like that for five schools and 10 seasons now.
It’s almost as if these present day Bruins were protecting the legacy of the last team to win more than two in a row. UCLA — which now has 20 national championships in men’s volleyball, won all four from 1981 to 1984.
With precocious freshman setter Andrew Rowan among those returning, the Bruins will likely be No. 1 going into next season.
What of the Warriors?
“So sad,” said Shoko Burkett, a therapist from Kaimuki, and a fervent fan going back to the Costas Theocharidis won-it-all-no-you-didn’t season of 2002.
“So sad,” she repeated. “But happy.”
Burkett knows the Warriors must now rebuild. But she also knows they lost most of their starters after the 2021 championship and repeated last year.
She knows the ups-and-downs are what make the victories sweeter.
“That last game in 2020, the exciting win against BYU, the reverse sweep that made us all believe, and then everything shut down (due to the pandemic) when we had such a great chance that year,” Burkett said. “But then everyone came back, and they won, without any fans at the games. And then a team with new starters wins last year.”
Setter Jakob Thelle, the National Player of the Year, will be the hardest of several key players to replace. But coach Charlie Wade has proven over the years that if there’s volleyball talent anywhere on this planet, he will find it, and he and his staff know what to do with it.
You can disagree, but I’m going to go ahead and call two championships and a runner-up in three years a dynasty.
Over the past several years, this team helped us put our problems on pause. Guys from Norway, Greece, Makawao and Waimanalo helped us forget about a pandemic, the lack of a stadium, the price of gasoline and anything else bothering us, at least for a little while.
They did what sports dynasties do. They united a community and brought it a whole lot of happiness.
Even if you don’t care about volleyball, if you live in Hawaii you interact with a lot of people who do, and smiles are as contagious as COVID-19.
Back to Billy V one more time:
“I think sometimes the fans forget, and maybe even the team forgets that whether we’re at Fairfax, Va.; the Stan Sheriff Center, or at a watch party at Giovanni Pastrami, what they have is very powerful. They have the power to bring people together.”
