ESPN Honolulu Rainbow Wahine play-by-play voice Tiff Wells with his six biggest takeaways from the previous week for the Bows
1 – Stats Don’t Always Tell The Whole Story. If you look at the box score and see both the individual and team stats, more often than not you’ll know who won the match prior to seeing the final score. However last week against Stanford, the team that won the majority of the stats didn’t win the match. The Cardinal in the first match out-hit (.290-.269) and out-blocked (12-5) Hawai`i but the Rainbow Warriors won the serve/pass game en route to the five-set win (23-25, 25-20, 25-19, 20-25, 16-14). Two nights later, it was UH’s turn to win the majority of stats as they out-hit (.322-.315) and out-blocked (10-7.5) the Cardinal as Stanford won the final three sets (19-25, 26-24, 25-23, 26-24) with late closing runs in each of those last three sets.
2 – 3 Hours, 1 Minute. Hope you didn’t need a note to your boss or teacher if you appeared a little tired entering the office or classroom on Thursday after Wednesday’s match ended at 10:06 p.m. local time. Multiple timeouts per set and a lengthy amount of time spent during challenges led to a season long 3 hours and 1 minute match that needed extra points on top of a fifth set before a Tread Rosenthal kill sent the Hawai`i faithful home happy for a seventh time in #WarriorBall25. With the win, UH is now 3-0 in Wednesday matches with one more remaining (3/5 vs Lindenwood). Outside of the BYU series where those matches were back-to-back, all other series to date have had a day off in between matches. What was interesting when looking at those sets scores was two of the five were decided by two points and one of the sets, the last one, went into extra points. The other three were decided by 5, 6 and 5 points. Friday’s match was decided in four sets and lasted almost another three hours (2:50 to be exact). With the bye week coming, UH will welcome it with open arms. Multiple practices to work on things while allowing some to get back to 100% health.
3 – We Three Pins. Kills, aces and blocks may or may not be as good as gold, frankincense and myrrh but it was a battle of the pin hitters on both nights here in Honolulu. It was two freshman and a sophomore for Hawai`i (Adrien Roure, Kristian Titriyski and Louis Sakanoko) against two upperclassman and a sophomore for Stanford (Theo Snoey, Moses Wagner and Nate Clinton). 42 of the 56 kills for UH on night one came from those three pin hitters while 43 of the 54 kills came from Stanford’s pin trio. Night two for UH had 46 of the 56 kills from their pins while Stanford notched 43 of their 56 kills from the pins. A little more offense for the Cardinal from their middles (11 kills on 19 errorless swings) made the difference as their offense was a little more spread out as they won the second match in the series. A different attacking style from those Stanford pin hitters caused fits for UH blockers all series long. Stanford’s hitters continuously (and legally) pushed the ball off and through the block, time and time again.
4 – Quick Turnaround From Provo. Play matches on both Friday night and Saturday night in Provo against a top 6 team and a rival at that. Fly a little over 2,800 miles back home on Sunday. Rest Monday. Practice Tuesday. Play on Wednesday against another Top 10 team. That’s not a lot of days in between to rest and recover for these student-athletes. We mentioned the rival (BYU) and with those rivalry matches came a lot of energy spent on each night. A lot of that energy was expended making multiple comebacks over that two hour and 40 minute match on night one. The Bows trailed by a set two separate times to eventually force the fifth set, only to make another comeback after trailing 8-4 at the turn before ultimately fighting off six match point opportunities to win the match. Another two-plus hour match on night two as what could have been a 3-0 sweep turned into a 4-set victory. BYU’s high-ball offense to the pins gave UH’s blockers ample time to set up their block, as they totaled 35 for the two-match series. With just three days of prep ahead of the first Stanford match, UH notched only five team blocks. With a match experience of seeing the quick tempo offense under the belt and a day in between to watch more film, the Bows recorded 10 blocks. Four tough matches in two states over eight days against Top 9 teams, the Rainbow Warriors went 3-1. Not too shabby for a team that has at times five underclassmen in their starting lineup.
5 – Dug In. Prior to the Stanford series, Hawai`i scored double-digit blocks in four of the first eight matches of the season. Shorter rallies, more service errors can sometimes lead to fewer dig attempts and dig totals for both individual players and the team. While UH entered the week leading the league in blocks per set, they were last in the league in digs per set. The Cardinal were averaging over nine digs per set, which was good for second in their league and 12th in the nation. Individually, Stanford libero Evan Porter was the leading digger in the MPSF with over two per set. UH knew that if the block wasn’t going to get points, their backrow had to show up and put up comparable numbers to the Stanford backrow players. And they did…both nights. UH led the dig department 37-33 (night 1) and 36-33 (night 2). Those dig numbers for UH (37 and 36) currently rank as 1 and 2 for UH matches this year in digs. Individually, `Eleu Choy had 1 more dig (16) than his counterpart for Stanford (15) did in the series. If UH can continue to get digs (both quality and quantity) and transition them into kills, that all-around game for this team could take them far this season.
Aloha To A Few Streaks. Streaks won’t last forever so we must appreciate them while they last. Of recent history, Stanford was one of the few teams that Hawai`i just had their number. Coming into the Stanford series, UH had won the last 11 matches overall and the last nine in Honolulu. Grinding out that five set win on Monday, those streaks moved to 12-straight wins overall and 10-straight wins in Honolulu. With Stanford defeating the Bows on Friday night 3-1, it marked their first win in the series since February 13th, 2016 and their first win in Honolulu since February 1st, 2013. Despite UH’s move to the Big West Conference following the end of the 2017 season, Stanford has been one of the few teams from the MPSF that UH has continuously played. This 2025 series marked the fifth non-conference series since 2019. Also a very impressive streak that ended was winning in February. Dating back to February 25th, 2018 against UC Irvine, UH had won their last 38 matches in the month of February prior to last Friday’s loss. When UH takes the court in Belmont, North Carolina next week Thursday against Belmont Abbey, the Rainbow Warriors seek to start a new win streak.
A streak that will continue after this season is Hawai`i leading the nation in attendance. This past week, UH sold 15,391 tickets for the two-match series with 13,353 coming through the gates. This includes last Friday’s season-high numbers of 8,559 tickets issued and 7,473 turnstile count. With home matches against Top 10 teams Ball State and USC, as well as two-match series against both UC Irvine (currently undefeated at No. 2 in the country) and current No. 1 (and undefeated) Long Beach State, attendance numbers could become even higher in the remaing home matches for #WarriorBall25.