Hawaii's Brian Beckwith, Kyle Klinger, and Matt Bender tried to block a kill attempt from Pacific's Brian Zodrow, a Saint Louis School alumnus, last night.
Warriors cage Tigers
No. 5 Hawaii rallies for a victory
after visiting Pacific wins the match’s
opening game
Talk about a Freaky Friday.
League doormat UC San Diego nearly knocks off top-ranked UCLA and Hawaii is able to win Game 2 with just nine kills.
But such is the way of the unpredictable world of Mountain Pacific Sports Federation volleyball. Anything can happen and, this season, it has, with upsets often being the norm.
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A turnstile crowd of 2,860 (4,207 tickets) saw Hawaii inch closer to securing a home playoff berth with the 2 hour, 8 minute victory. The Warriors (18-8, 14-17) will host an MPSF quarterfinal match next Saturday if they can defeat the Tigers (12-17, 6-15) in tonight's regular-season finale at 7.
Saint Louis School product Brian Zodrow led UOP with 18 kills. Nils Dauburs added 11 and Maurico Brizuela 10.
"Pedro's a great server," Zodrow said. "He serves really hard. He can bring the short serve, he mixes it up and it's confusing. You know it's coming but ... you just have to hang in there and pass the ball.
"Tomorrow, we need to minimize the service errors and pass better."
Tonight will be the final match for six of the Tigers, including Zodrow and Kamehameha graduate Bryson Metz. It's also senior night for Azenha and reserve setter Daniel Rasay.
Azenha started the night 11 aces away from becoming the UH career leader. He is now five away from passing Costas Theocharidis' 121 after dominating the service line with three aces in both Games 2 and 3.
"I was feeling good, and when I'm feeling good, my serve is good," Azenha said. "And tomorrow, we need to start off better. After Game 1, we played pretty good."
The Tigers pulled away in Game 1 on the strength of their block. Pacific had 6.5, including three in a row during a 6-0 run that gave the Tigers the lead for good at 25-19.
Hawaii senior Pedro Azenha dropped a kill past Pacific's Bryson Metz, a Kamehameha graduate, last night.
"We're a better blocking team than we showed tonight," UOP coach Joe Wortmann said. "We start blocking better and it takes away some of what they do. It's all about serving and passing. We needed to keep doing what we did in Game 1."
The Tigers had three aces in Game 1 and "they had some really nice serves," UH coach Mike Wilton said. "They surprised us, actually. We knew they had two guys who can bring it but they had four guys tonight.
"We almost caught them in Game 1. And then we settled down pretty well the rest of the day. We'll need to come out (tonight) and be ready to pass from the get-go."
The oddity of Game 2 had the Warriors winning with just nine kills in 19 swings. The other points came via four aces, three blocks and a variety of Tiger serving and hitting errors.
Azenha's serving in Game 3 iced it. It was 19-14 when he went back to serve. When he was done, he had three aces and the Warriors had a 23-14 lead.
Hawaii hit .517 in Game 4, with 15 kills and no errors on 29 attempts. Matt Carere had six of his 10 kills in the final game.
Dio Dante and Klinger combined for 17 kills with just one error.
"Our middles continue to play very steady for us," Wilton said.
Note: UC San Diego nearly gave departing coach Ron Larsen the biggest win in school history last night before falling to top-ranked UCLA, 26-30, 30-23, 35-37, 30-20, 18-16 at the RIMAC Arena in San Diego.
The Tritons finish the MPSF season at 1-21, 2-24 overall. Larsen, the 2004 MPSF Coach of the Year resigned Thursday after six seasons to take the first assistant's job with the USA Men's Olympic Team.
The Bruins improved to 25-4 and 18-4, and takes the second seed into next week's conference tournament.
MPSF standings
Conference Overall W L Pct. W L xy- Pepperdine 20 2 .909 21 2 xz- UCLA 18 4 .818 25 4 x- Hawaii 14 7 .667 18 8 x- Brigham Young 14 7 .667 19 9 x- Long Beach State 13 8 .619 19 9 x- UC Santa Barbara 12 9 .571 14 13 x- Stanford 10 11 .476 11 13 x- CS Northridge 10 12 .455 17 13 UC Irvine 7 14 .333 9 19 Pacific 6 15 .286 12 17 USC 3 18 .143 6 22 UC San Diego 1 21 .045 2 24 x-clinched MPSF Tournament berth
y-No. 1 seed
z-No. 2 seedYesterday
Hawaii def. Pacific, 25-30, 30-22, 30-18, 30-21
BYU def. Stanford, 30-28, 18-30, 30-26, 32-30
Pepperdine def. CS Northridge, 30-26, 25-30, 30-25, 30-22
UCLA def. UC San Diego, 26-30, 30-23, 35-37, 30-20, 18-16Today
Pacific at Hawaii, 7 p.m., Stan Sheriff Center
BYU at Stanford
Long Beach State at UC Irvine
USC at UC Santa Barbara
Hawaii def. Pacific
25-30, 30-22, 30-18, 30-21
Tigers (12-17, 6-15 mpsf) g k e att pct. bs ba d Hazelett 4 2 1 4 .250 0 0 8 Brizuela 4 10 3 21 .333 1 2 5 Zodrow 4 18 6 36 .333 0 3 5 Alexander 4 5 2 8 .375 0 1 0 Metz 4 7 7 21 .000 0 1 4 Dauburs 4 11 5 19 .316 0 4 1 Gawlik 4 0 0 0 .000 0 0 16 Cunningham 1 0 0 0 .000 0 0 0 Adamson 1 0 0 1 .000 0 0 0 Hammer 1 1 1 2 .000 0 0 0 Chen-Byerley 2 0 0 2 .000 0 0 0 Gonzales 3 1 4 8 -.375 0 0 0 Totals 4 55 29 122 .213 1 11 39 Warriors (18-8, 14-7 mpsf) g k e att pct. bs ba d Klinger 4 8 1 13 .538 0 5 0 Carere 4 10 3 20 .350 1 2 5 Beckwith 4 1 1 3 .000 0 0 3 Azenha 4 11 3 30 .267 0 4 5 Bender 4 15 3 35 .343 0 2 3 Dante 4 9 0 13 .692 0 3 2 Reft 4 0 0 0 .000 0 0 11 Rasay 3 0 0 0 .000 0 0 0 Totals 4 54 11 114 .377 1 16 29 Key -- g: games; k: kills; e: hitting errors; att: attempts; pct.: hitting percentage; bs: block solos; ba: block assists; d: digs.
Aces -- Pacific (8): Metz 4, Dauburs 3, Brizuela. Hawaii (9): Azenha 6, Carere, Dante, Klinger. Assists -- Pacific (53): Hazelett 46, Dauburs 3, Gawlik 2, Cunningham, Gonzales. Hawaii (46): Beckwith 44, Klinger, Reft.
T -- 2:08. Officials -- Ernie Ho, Wayne Lee. A -- 2,860.
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