The victory at Burnham Pavilion clinched the MPSF's Pacific Division title for the Cardinal, who improved to 18-3 overall and 13-3 in league play. Hawaii, 15-9 and 7-8, must now win its final four matches to keep its playoff hopes alive.

"We didn't play well at all," said Hawaii coach Mike Wilton, whose team extended Stanford to five games Tuesday before losing after nearly three hours. "Game 1 was real winnable, but we got way down in Games 2 and 3 before we came back to make it interesting.

"It wasn't so much what Stanford was doing as what we were doing to ourselves. There were blown assignments, sporadic passing, things that led to us being unable to get into our system on offense.

"The silver lining is that we never quit, but we sure were inept at times."

Hawaii's Jason Ring had a match-high 31 kills, hitting .449. It was not enough to combat the balanced attack by Stanford's Mike Lambert, Michael Hoefer, Kennan Whitehurst and Andy Witt, who combined for 51 of the Cardinal's 58 kills.

Lambert led Stanford with 14 kills.

Hawaii travels to Stockton, Calif., today and will meet Pacific Division rival Pacific (13-8, 6-8) in two critical matches tomorrow and Saturday at 5 p.m. HST.

"These two games are huge for both teams," said Wilton. "UOP has done some very good things this season. But if we can just play up to our abilities, we can win."

The Tigers are led by senior hitter Greg Wakeham, ranked No. 2 in kills nationally, and sophomore Vladimir Andric, second in the country in service aces.

Hawaii will finish out the regular season at home with matches against Southern Cal next Friday and Saturday.