Minutes after the final volleyball fell to the ground on the Pepperdine side, Robyn Ah Mow looked back at what happened almost three hours earlier.

“Hey, at least we never started slow in the first set,” she said with a smile.

The Rainbow Wahine won the first set in a match for the first time this season and it turned out to make quite a difference as Hawaii held off a hard-charging Pepperdine squad in five sets, 25-16, 25-22, 22-25, 21-25, 15-9, on Saturday night.

A SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 5,266 erupted for the final time when Tayli Ikenaga closed out a game-deciding 7-1 run with an ace to help Hawaii (3-1) avoid getting reverse swept.

Junior Caylen Alexander had six of her team-high 25 kills in the fifth set and Ikenaga finished with a career-high 33 digs to give her 60 in the past two matches.

“The first set, no ball dropped. They went out on defense and did whatever they needed to do,” Ah Mow said.

Ah Mow made one change to her starting lineup, putting in freshman Victoria Leyva to give Hawaii two back-row specialists on the court to start a match.

Leyva had 12 digs and sophomore Stella Adeyemi, who came off the bench for the first time, hit a career-high .370 with 13 kills.

“I was going to start Vic yesterday, but I thought maybe Stella needs a little (confidence) before she gets in, but we decided to go with Vic and it helped us out in the back row with our passing,” Ah Mow said.

Birdie Hendrickson had 10 of her team-high 25 kills in the third set to help prevent the Waves (1-3) from getting swept for a second time this season.

Grace Chillingworth added 16 kills for Pepperdine, which forced a fifth set for the second straight match as Hawaii struggled to put down balls.

Hawaii setter Kate Lang found the hot hand in Alexander in the fifth set and finished with a match-high 57 assists and 14 digs.

“I’ve got to give props to Kate. Kate distributed the offense and made a more diverse offense,” Ah Mow said. “They came out and played from the beginning.”

All four starting hitters had at least two kills in the opening set and nobody hit negative as Lang directed an offense that hit .394 in the first set.

Pepperdine took its first timeout trailing 7-1 after an Alexander kill, and its second timeout came on a double block from Jacyn Bamis and Alexander to put UH ahead 17-12.

The Rainbow Wahine closed the set on a 13-4 run, with Adeyemi scoring the final two points on kills to give four in four swings.

The Waves survived three set points in the second set to get to 24-22 before Alexander ended a long rally with a kill from the back row to put UH in position for its first sweep of the season.

Despite a significant height advantage, Pepperdine had only two blocks in the first two sets while UH had five. Bamis was in on four of those blocks and had six kills in 16 swings heading into the third set.

Hawaii did not finish the sweep as the Waves battled back to take the third set with Hendrickson heating up. The graduate senior had 10 of her kills in the set, with the last coming on Pepperdine’s second set point.

Neither team led by more than two points in the fourth set until Hendrickson tipped a ball that landed in the middle of UH’s court, prompting Ah Mow to call a timeout with her team trailing 17-14.

Hawaii suddenly found trouble trying to put balls down and the Waves took advantage to force a fifth set.

The Rainbow Wahine don’t have to wait long to get back out on the court as they host Texas State on Tuesday night at 7.