On the surface, it came down to a hot start hitting and clutch plays down the stretch by Hawaii and too many mistakes — forced and unforced — by Long Beach State.
The Rainbow Warriors are Big West champions with a shot at their third men’s volleyball national championship of the decade also because they did not let the Beach’s biggest weapon take over the match.
“The main reason was our ability to receive,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said, pointing out that libero ‘Eleu Choy and the rest of UH’s service receivers didn’t allow LBSU’s dangerous server, Moni Nikolov, to dominate from the start of the match.
Instead, it was UH’s Louis Sakanoko with the clutch serves, planting four of Hawaii’s five aces with just one of the home team’s 11 errors.
Long Beach State finished with eight aces, but 20 service errors.
And that’s why the Warriors could be so efficient hitting while taking a 2-0 lead on their way to a four-set victory at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center on Saturday, and are packing for Columbus, Ohio, with a shot at their third men’s volleyball national championship of the decade.
“Both teams played pretty well coming out of the gate, but we had trouble containing Hawaii’s offense,” LBSU coach Alan Knipe said. “We couldn’t slow them down at the beginning. That was the difference in the match. … We just didn’t put enough serving pressure on them … they were in system.”
That allowed Hawaii to hit .540 in the first two sets, including .600 for the second set.
Hawaii never trailed in winning the first set, and its freshman hitters were nearly errorless in 15 swings that produced 10 kills. Finn Kearney was 7-for-9 with one error, and Adrien Roure was 3-for-6 with no errors.
After two sets, Roure was 9-for-13.
It wasn’t until the third set that Long Beach State showed what it is capable of from the service line, when Nikolov bombed four in a row that were simply unreturnable.
“He absolutely detonated two of them,” Wade said.
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Nikolov turned his set of aces into quads after a UH timeout, and it proved to be the decisive segment of the third set, and gave the Beach momentum.
“It was great, obviously,” Knipe said. “It gave us the opportunity to get back into the match. … But it came down to execution (at the end).”
