An overpass and a miscommunication on match point provided a fitting ending for the fifth-ranked Hawaii men’s volleyball team on Friday.
No. 9 Cal State Northridge, which hadn’t won a Big West match yet this season, got a match-high 16 kills from Jalen Phillips and hit a staggering .507 to roll the Rainbow Warriors 25-17, 25-20, 25-20 at Premier America Credit Union Arena in Northridge, Calif.
Joao Avila added 10 kills and hit .692 for CSUN (16-7, 1-4), which handed Hawaii (21-3, 4-1) its first three-set loss of the season.
“Look, you’ve got to give credit to Northridge. They were really good,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said. “We weren’t good really at anything. Nothing ever really broke our way. We just couldn’t get anything going and didn’t get any breaks. Sometimes that’s the nature of competitive athletics.”
The loss ended a nine-game winning streak for Hawaii against CSUN dating back to 2019. A year earlier, the Rainbow Warriors were swept on back-to-back nights in California.
Kristian Titriyski had 14 of Hawaii’s 30 total kills and no other Rainbow Warrior had more than five kills.
CSUN finished with 9.5 blocks, which all happened in the first two sets. The Matadors won the third set despite committing eight service errors and allowing Hawaii to hit .500 to raise its hitting percentage to .219 for the match.
“They had lost four in a row and they are a lot better than they had played the last couple of weeks,” Wade said. “They were at home. Everybody plays better at home. I thought we looked decent at practice today and serving in warm-ups was good. There wasn’t anything pointing to us not playing well, but we didn’t play great.”
The Rainbow Warriors’ struggles in the first set continued for the rest of the match. They had trouble passing CSUN’s serves, allowing the Matadors to close the set on a 10-3 run to take an early lead.
UH was held to seven kills and hit .045. Titriyski had three kills and no other UH player had more than one. CSUN tallied 4.5 blocks and hit .476. It also doubled up on Hawaii in digs, 8-4.
“The first set, the passing wasn’t great and we lost all of those (key) plays,” Wade said.
CSUN’s Donovan Constable and Stilian Delibosov kept the block party going in the second set, turning back Adrien Roure on the first point.
The set ended the same way it started, as the Matadors closed with four of the final five points, including a double block of Louis Sakanoko to go up 2-0.
CSUN added five more blocks in the second set to give them 9.5 through two as UH struggled to find a rhythm on offense, hitting .140 for the match to that point.
Titriyski had 11 of UH’s 21 kills through two sets. Roure and Sakanoko, UH’s starting outside hitters, combined for five kills and seven errors.
“Certainly we talked about (making a change),” Wade said. “Clay (Wieter’s) back is out. He’s kind of the next guy, but he wasn’t available.”
Hawaii fell a half-game behind No. 1 Long Beach State, which finished off a series sweep of UC Santa Barbara on Friday, in the conference standings.
UH and CSUN rematch today at 3 p.m. A victory for Hawaii would move it into a tie with the Beach heading into the two matches between the two schools next week at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
