Warriors struggle to 16th straight

UH plays its two longest games of the year and needs four to beat last-place UC San Diego

It must have been contagious.

Or maybe it was sympathy pains.

HAWAII   SAN DIEGO 3 1 Next Up vs. San Diego, tonight

An ailing Jose Delgado didn't make it to last night's match with unranked UC Diego. But whatever the Hawaii senior hitter had sure showed up at the Stan Sheriff Center, infecting his teammates.

Big time.

The No. 3 Warriors never quite shook off the lethargy but did manage to finally shake the unranked Tritons. Hawaii set a school record with its 16th consecutive victory, getting 21 kills from Matt Carere and 20 from Lauri Hakala, in turning back UCSD, 38-36, 37-39, 30-20, 30-21, in 2 hours and 31 minutes.

A crowd of 3,561 saw the Warriors improve to 20-4 overall and 16-3 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, and the Tritons fall to 1-25 and 0-19. The teams meet again at 7 tonight with Hawaii looking to extend its series lead over UCSD to 34-0 and UCSD looking to end its 18-match slide.

Triton coach Kevin Ring couldn't have been prouder of his team.

"It was the best we played all season," Ring said. "We had opportunities to win Game 1 and then to lose it and come back in Game 2 shows a lot of fight in these guys.

"You know what our record is, where we are in the league, and you know we're not making the playoffs ... it doesn't matter to these guys. They've got my respect for how hard they work. The emotion, the adrenaline was so high in the first two games and it tapered off. Against a team of this caliber (Hawaii) you have to go the distance."

Last night, the Warriors nowhere resembled the team that had been steamrolling opponents until late. Hawaii looked out of sync, starting with the lineup change in which senior Matt Bender made his first start of the season in place of Delgado.

The match was tied at 1-1 after the Warriors won one they probably shouldn't have then couldn't put the Tritons away in the second.

Hawaii was fortunate to win Game 1, staying close thanks in part to 13 unforced errors by UCSD. The Warriors fended off two game points by the Tritons before having seven swings at ending it.

Dio Dante's slam back of a service overpass finally finished it off after some 40 minutes. It was the longest game of the season for Hawaii, the previous being the Warriors' 36-34 win in Game 2 against UC Santa Barbara.

That marathon mark stood for another 40 minutes. Hawaii looked well on its way to a sixth straight sweep after taking a 28-23 lead. UCSD refused to fold, tying it at 28

It was tied nine more times. Hawaii had two chances to go into the locker room ahead at 2-0 but couldn't pull it off. Instead it was UCSD that won it on its ninth game-point when Bender hit long.

The Warriors took control midway through Game 3 behind the serving of sophomore Jake Schkud, who was seeing the most playing time of his career when replacing senior Mauli'a La Barre in the middle. At 12-11, Schkud put down a kill then served for seven straight for a commanding 20-11 lead.

The Tritons never got closer than seven the rest of the way and didn't get out of negative hitting percentage until it was 27-19. The Warriors had five of their 15 blocks in Game 3 to thwart UCSD's attack.

"We came out slow, maybe with Jose being out, it kind of shifted our game plan," Schkud said. "They're a good team, although their record doesn't show that. They have nothing to lose right now and they can swing away. They're not going to go down without a fight."

Game 4 was a repeat of Game 3. Hawaii again took a big lead and never let up, breathing a collective sigh of relief when Bender put down his 15th kill.

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