The No. 3 University of Hawai‘i men’s volleyball team held off No. 7 Pepperdine in a dramatic four-set victory Friday night at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center, earning a split in the two-match nonconference series. Set scores were 25-22, 21-25, 25-15, 36-34.

The match was decided in a marathon fourth set that featured numerous momentum swings and several chances for both teams. Pepperdine had five opportunities to extend the match to a fifth set, while Hawai‘i served for the win eight times before finally closing it out when setter Tread Rosenthal finished the match with a kill.

Late in the decisive fourth set with the score tied at 27, Adrien Roure stepped to the service line.

Despite Pepperdine’s 2-1 set lead, the University of Hawai‘i had been battling back, matching every Wave point with one of their own as the set pushed past the 25-point limit.

Roure tossed the ball and fired a missile to the opponent’s side, finding the back corner of the floor for an ace.

All 5,313 fans inside the Stan Sheriff Center erupted, celebrating Roure’s go-ahead ace that gave Hawai‘i a 28-27 lead in the fourth set and hope of forcing a deciding fifth.

1. Home Sweet Home – January 16th seemed so long ago. Prior to the BYU series added on February 6th after the NIL Tournament was officially cancelled on January 27th, it would have been 47 days since the last Hawai`i home match. In between, UH had: multiple flight cancelations getting to Chicago’s O’Hare airport, an unexpected overnight stay in Chicago, seen multiple inches of snow in Pennsylvania, a team vehicle broken into while having dinner at Stanford and a couple of bye weeks. Lots of credit goes to first-year UH Assistant Coach Donan Cruz as he was the one to scour through opposing schedules to see which team(s) had an open week and eventually reached out to BYU’s Head Coach Shawn Olmstead.

The third-ranked University of Hawaiʻi men’s volleyball team earned a four-set win over No. 6 BYU on Wednesday night at Bankoh Arena, posting a 27-25, 23-25, 25-17, 25-18 victory.

Mahalo to Charlie Wade and special guests Adrien Roure and Louis Sakanoko for joining the Charlie Wade Show on ESPN Honolulu.

1. Fallen Trees Make Loud Noises…Twice – As the age-old question goes, “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” After a week off and defrosting from the cold Pennsylvania winter weather, the Rainbow Warriors were back on the road again, this time on The Farm at Stanford. The Bows remembered all too well what happened on night two of the series last year in Honolulu when the Cardinal upset Hawai`i in four sets. There wasn’t a sense of payback or needing to atone for what happened last year, last year was last year.