The Rams' loss broke a tie with Brigham Young University for the Western Athletic Conference Mountain Division's top spot and put them in the same bracket as Hawaii for next week's WAC Tournament. The gap between Hawaii and CSU in the regional rankings also narrowed, with UH still at No. 6 and CSU falling a spot to fifth.

"We got what we wanted," Hawaii coach Dave Shoji said. UH remained No. 14 in this week's coaches poll. "We felt that we needed to have the chance to beat Colorado State in the (WAC) tournament in order to host in the postseason."

The rankings are used by the NCAA selection committee to seed teams in postseason play and determine host schools. The committee is going to have a difficult time 10 days from now when seeding 56 teams into its 17th annual event as 15 of the top 25 teams are from the same quadrant.

District 7 - Hawaii's region - is partnered with District 8 this season. District 7 is comprised of the WAC, Big West and Southland conference, and District 8 includes the Pac-10 and West Coast conference.

The NCAA tournament pairings will be announced Nov. 30. Hawaii has put in a bid to host the first- and second-round mini-regional Dec. 4-5.

PULLING RANK: Heading into Sunday's match with No. 3 Stanford, Hawaii has defeated just one ranked team this season: UH split its two matches with Loyola Marymount in September.

Hawaii has lost to ranked teams Long Beach State, UCLA, Pepperdine and Pacific.

Stanford trails in the series with Hawaii, 7-16, but has defeated the Wahine in the last three meetings. The Cardinal won twice last season, stopping Hawaii's 23-match winning streak then sweeping the Wahine in the NCAA final.

TOUGH CALL: A coin flip Sunday in the WAC office broke a second-place tie in the WAC Pacific Division between San Diego State and Fresno State. Both finished 11-3.

The Aztecs earned a first-round bye in the WAC Tournament and will play the winner of the TCU-Wyoming match. The Bulldogs have a first-round match with Texas-El Paso, and should Fresno State win, the Bulldogs would play Colorado State in the second round.

STILL THE ONE: Brigham Young-Hawaii hasn't played a match in two weeks, but that doesn't matter to the pollsters. The Seasiders remained the unanimous No. 1 choice in the NAIA Top 25 rankings released yesterday.

BYU-Hawaii (25-0) is 75-3 in games this season, dropping sets to Biola, Hawaii-Hilo and Chaminade. The Seasiders look to tie Hawaii-Hilo with four consecutive NAIA titles when they compete in the national tournament Dec. 3-6 in Chicago.

RECORD BREAKER: Andrea Clark, a senior setter for San Diego State, broke the WAC mark for assist average. She had 13.89 assists per game, breaking the record held by former Aztec Stacy Bollinger (13.49 in 1993).