Hawaii pounds 49ers in 3 games

Patience and quickness.

It was the perfect 1-2 punch for the Hawaii men's volleyball team last night. Add an amazing display of power and balance, and the Warriors were able to dominate conference leader Long Beach State last night at the Stan Sheriff Center.

No. 4 Hawaii shredded the vaunted 49er block en route to sweeping No. 4 Long Beach State 30-21, 30-25, 30-22. Three Warriors had 13 kills each and UH outblocked the Beach 13 1/2-2 with stunning efficiency.

The schooling lasted just 100 minutes, during which the turnstile crowd of 2,248 (3,382 tickets distributed) saw Hawaii improve to 6-4 overall and 4-3 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.

Long Beach State, swept for the first time since falling to Pepperdine last season, dropped to 11-3 and 6-2. The teams meet again tonight at 7.

"We played excellent tonight," said UH junior hitter Lauri Hakala, putting down 13 kills with no errors in 19 swings. "It's hard to compare this with our win at Pepperdine (last Friday). Both were superb.

"But I know they can do better tomorrow and so can we. We want to get them again."

This was the first time the Warriors won the first match in four MPSF series. There was little time for celebration, with the focus already on tonight's rematch just minutes after Jose Delgado ended last night's match with his 13th kill.

"Tomorrow's a different day," Hawaii coach Mike Wilton said. "We need to bring a full head of steam into tomorrow and it starts right now.

"We were pretty efficient until Game 3, when we missed a lot of serves (six). But I liked how when there were some sticky moments, we stuck together."

Long Beach State mounted a few challenges, the best when closing to 22-21 in Game 3. After the 49ers' Robert Tarr served long, Hawaii's Matt Carere served for five unanswered points to help the Warriors pull away at 28-21.

Long Beach held off one match point only to see Delgado convert on a cross-court set from Brian Beckwith to end it.

"We needed to have a tough showing the first night," said Beckwith, who was in on five of his team's blocks. "Tonight, we were playing with the confidence of one of the top teams in the league. No matter what the rankings say, we are one of the best teams.

"Look at the scoreboard. We had 13, 13, 13 (three players with 13 kills). We ran the quick offense and it's easy once it's in my hands. If we want it fast, they've got to give me the ball, and they did.

"The focus was to try and shut down teams as soon as possible."

The quickness of the defeat took Long Beach State coach Alan Knipe by surprise.

"Hawaii played really well tonight, in all areas of the game," Knipe said. " They put a lot of pressure on us with their serves. They got on nice runs and did exactly what we wanted to do to them. We wanted to force them out of their system.

"We weren't able to stay in our system very long. It was frustrating, getting outblocked like that. We thought we had a pretty good idea of where the balls were going to go and we didn't get over the net to block the balls we could have."

Long Beach State came in as the top blocking team in the MPSF, with 3.65 blocks per game. The 49ers also had the top two blockers in Teddy Liles and Duncan Budinger, who have combined for some 3.01 bpg; last night, the pair had a total of one block for the match.

"They didn't do anything that surprised us," Knipe said. "We knew they'd come out emotionally charged, trying to play well on night one, and they did.

Game 1's 21 points was the fewest points scored by the 49ers all season. Only Tarr was in double figures with 16 kills.

Hawaii hit an outrageous .484, led by Hakala's .684. Carere added 13 kills with just one error, hitting .571, and Delgado had 13 kills, hitting .312.