Tiff’s takeaways for #WarriorBall26 - Week 4

By Tiff Wells

1. Adversity From The Get Go – Winter Storm Fern didn’t care if this was UH’s first trip to the Northeast in quite some time. Two separate flight itineraries were cancelled due to weather. Eventually, they got a non-stop flight to Chicago where...another weather delay forced them to stay the night in the area. The Rainbow Warriors eventually landed in The Quaker State Tuesday afternoon, a day later than originally planned and some 28 hours before their first match. The first ever trip to Loretto, PA included snow flurries and an outside temperature of three degrees at first serve against Saint Francis. Cold temperature, jet lag, trying to get the body warm and loose while playing against a senior heavy lineup all added up to a sluggish start. Down 20-17 in the first set, the Bows closed the set on an 8-3 run and wouldn’t look back. Six of their nine hitting errors in the match came in that first set while hitting just .250. After that, UH got hot as the snow continued to fall outside as they hit .432 for the match (.582 in Set 2, .500 in Set 3) in the 3-0 win. A top-14 matchup two days later at Penn State saw UH close each of the first two sets on a 3-1 run to go up 2-0 before a 25-15 Set 3 rout and another 3-0 victory. PSU snapped UH’s 13-set win streak in the second match of the series as they won the first set 27-25. Trailing in a match score for the first time since January 9th, the Rainbow Warriors combined to hit .727 (27-1-36) in Sets 2 and 3, while siding out at 96.5% (25-of-26) to win those sets 25-10 and 25-15 respectively. Down 11-7 and 21-19 in Set 4, UH rallied to eventually serve for the match. Four of their season-high 25 service errors came while attempting to serve aloha ball. UH also fought off six Penn State set point chances and on their eighth opportunity to close it out, Adrien Roure’s service error was then challenged, later overturned for the walk-off ace and a 3-1 win. UH won all three matches in their first road-trip that nearly covered 10,000 air miles by hitting no worse than .350 while also enduring: multiple flight cancellations, an unexpected overnight stay, bad weather, trailing a match by a set (having only lost the set by the minimum two points) for the first time in nearly three weeks, a season-high in service errors for a match and fighting off six set point chances in the last set of the trip that ended up finishing with a 38-36 score.

2. Leaving The Valley Happy Twice – Associate Head Coach Kupono Fey mentioned in our Friday pre-match chat just how much of an honor and privilege it was to play at Penn State in this, the 32nd and final year under Head Coach Mark Pavlik. The last time UH made the trek was in 2002. Wins over Penn State and Pepperdine gave Hawai`i their first National Championship, which was then later vacated. Nearly 26 years passed by before Hawai`i came to Rec Hall. Before the first match, there was a presentation of a lei o mano (traditional Hawaiian weapon) from Head Coach Charlie Wade to Coach Pavlik. Prior to last Friday, only two other opposing Head Coaches had ever been presented with one: Al Scates (UCLA) and Marv Dunphy (Pepperdine). Sets won by three and two points gave UH a 2-0 match lead before a 10-point third set victory pushed UH’s win streak to six. Less than 24 hours later, the Bows saw themselves down in the match for the first time in nearly three weeks. Playing angry and out to make a statement, the Rainbow Warriors ran away with Set 2 (25-10) and cruised in Set 3 (25-15). The offense was hot (hitting a combined .727) and UH was siding out off first-ball contact (25-of-26) at will. Chasing for most of the fourth set, the Bows battled in the longest set to date of the season. Sixth time was the charm with a successful challenge following a service error that gave the Bows both matches in the series against Penn State. Of the seven sets played, UH won three of them by 10 or more points. Two solid road wins against a top-15 team gave the Bows a 10-1 record through January, having only dropped five sets (none by more than three points).  

3. The French Connection – Hailing from Paris and Lyon respectively, French natives Louis Sakanoko and Adrien Roure have been the left side mainstays in UH’s starting lineup. Entering last week’s road-trip, these two were in the Big West’s Top 10 in kills (Roure-4th, Sakanoko-5th) and hitting percentage (Roure-1st, Sakanoko-7th). After his 1st-Team All-America season as a freshman last year, there has been no sophomore slump for Roure. Even if there is a slow start to the match offensively, (as seen in Saturday’s win at Penn State), he finds other ways to be productive while climbing out of an early negative hitting hole. Double-digit kills (11, 10 and 11) in all three matches while hitting no worse than .263, the reliable serve-receiver has also enabled the Bows to sideout, both quickly and effectively. For Sakanoko, the Junior has been more decisive with his serving, more so choosing precision and placement over power. Even after a nine-kill performance where he hit .211, he came back the next night with a chip on his shoulder as he went off for a season-high 19 kills (tying his career-high) and hit .515 in the process. He also went nearly three full sets without a hitting error. Yes he had the very flashy kill to begin the third set in match two, but it’s been the shot selection both offensively and from the service line, as well as the attention to detail in both floor defense and serve receive that has really been the more impressive and noticeable elements to his game this season. Très bien Louis and Adrien.

4. Konsistent Kainoa – More often than not, the right-side hitter is expected to do a lot of the heavy lifting for the offense and score a lot of kills. Teams have depth, but not many teams have the quality of depth that UH has. Most teams would struggle severely when losing their number one option at opposite. Hawai`i is not like most teams. And with starter Kristian Titriyski dealing with the aftermath of surgery and rehab following the ankle injury that kept him out of the final eight matches of the 2025 season as well as back issues, a 6’10” sophomore has taken full advantage of the situation at hand. Wade has more than just filled in; he’s carried the load offensively and has earned so much trust there really isn’t a rush to push Titriyski back into the starting unit. Saint Francis had no answer for Wade as he went off for a match-high 14 kills, hitting .545 in the process and added nine digs with two blocks. Four of his nine kills on night one at Penn State came in Set 1 as he had three of UH’s seven aces. The sophomore saved his best performance of the road-trip for the last match of it as he went off and tied his career-high of 21 kills, but the more impressive feat was doing it on 40 swings with only three hitting errors. Hitting .450, he added: four blocks, five digs and three more aces. In matches he’s started this year, the sophomore has hit no worse than .318. His stat line last week in Pennsylvania: 44 kills (4.4/set), 55 points (5.5/set), seven aces, 19 digs and eight blocks. It was all capped off as he was named the Big West Conference’s Offensive Player of the Week for the first time on Monday.

5. The Toddfather – Came in as a pin hitter. Thrust into the middle because that was where he could get into the lineup quicker. Depth was then added to the middle where he could move back to his more natural pin hitting position. Injuries to that middle depth pushed him from the pins back to the middle. And never once has there been a complaint or an issue. Justin Todd just continues to put his head down and do whatever is best for the team, no matter the position where he’s at. International experience over the summer gave him even more confidence coming into #WarriorBall26. With the on-going foot issue for Roman Payne, Todd has entrenched himself in the middle and had himself a very impressive Pennsylvania road-trip. Five kills on six swings at Saint Francis, he hit .667 with two blocks. He showed that middles can play the backrow as he added three digs. Against two quality middles for Penn State, Todd shined. Night one he was offensively perfect (6-of-6) and tied his career-high of six blocks. Less than 24-hours later, he set a new career-high of seven blocks while adding three kills on five swings. Not your average middle from the service line, he currently is fourth on the team with 11 aces. Last weekend, he paced UH with 15 blocks (1.5/set) and 13 of those came in the series at Penn State. 14 kills on 17 attempts with just one error, he hit .765 during the three-match weekend. For his efforts, he was named Big West Conference Defensive Player of the Week for the first time.

6. Don’t Tread On The Setter – In some of the early media availabilities leading up to the season opener of #WarriorBall26, Head Coach Charlie Wade mentioned a Junior season for a player is more often than not a payoff year. He was really hoping after an impressive offseason with Team USA that this would be the case for Tread Rosenthal. So far, things are looking quite good. The team is ranked number three in the country with a 10-1 record. In the three matches last week, Rosenthal averaged 11 assists per set and quarterbacked UH’s offense to hit .405. In 11 matches this year, Hawai`i has hit north of .400 seven times. The blocking numbers have really picked up as well as he is second (29) to Justin Todd’s team-leading 31 blocks. There have been some wrinkles in UH’s offense as he’s becoming more creative in this, his third-year of running the offense. Still working on that perfection and location, the 6’11 Junior is making a case for both Big West and National Player of the Year. Another 50 assists gets him into UH’s Top 10. Sitting at 92 career aces, he’s eight shy of 100 and also tying both Yuval Katz and Sivan Leoni for ninth place all-time in UH history. Not bad for a spin server who not only has been dealing with some back issues but also wasn’t primarily a spin server until he got to Mānoa.

7. Bye Bye Bye NIL – Arguably the biggest news last week in the sport didn’t even come from a match that was played. As the team landed in Pennsylvania last Tuesday ahead of their first road-trip of the season, they learned that a first-year non-conference tournament was cancelled. Along with USA Volleyball and the organizers (EverWonder Studio and Seth Berger, creators of College Basketball’s Players Era in Las Vegas) of the NIL Tournament, UH was notified that the tournament to be played February 19th and 20th at the Honda Center in Anaheim would not happen. Outside of UH, no other school and not even USA Volleyball made any announcement about the cancellation. Sure there were edits to a team schedule and the taking down of the tournament notice by USAV, but that was it. While the idea of the tournament was fantastic and a good step into helping the #GrowTheGame movement, the execution, marketing and everything else behind the scenes just was not there. Not even a week since, LBSU has added a match with UCLA to give those two schools a home-and-home series. Per UH’s statement, “we’re actively working to schedule alternate matches.” How much scheduling can be done at the 12th hour to replace these two matches as we’re 2 ½ weeks out? As UH’s statement said, “stay tuned.”