HONOLULU – The No. 1 University of Hawai'i men's volleyball team outlasted No. 7 Long Beach State in five sets – with a little bit controversy and drama – Saturday night at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center. Set scores were 24-26, 32-30, 25-17, 20-25, 15-8.
The two rivals gave it all they had in a match that lasted 3 hours and 14 minutes, although some of it was spent on two delays by the officials who deemed UH's artificial crowd noise caused a disturbance to the Beach. The first delay lasted nearly 10 minutes in the second set, which eventually led to a heated debate by both head coaches who needed to be separated.
With the Beach leading 7-4 in Set 2, the officials first stopped the match to deal with the issue, which involved UH administrators in a rare on-court meeting. UH was forced to lower the sound level when LBSU servers were ready to serve. The delay seemed to motivate the Rainbow Warriors, who, already down a set, rallied from a six-point deficit to take Set 2, 32-30, and even the match at 1-1.
Hawai'i went on to take Set 3 before the Beach rallied back in the fourth to force a deciding set. In the fifth, the Warriors jumped out to a 4-1 lead and later scored three straight on a pair of
Rado Parapunov kills to make it 10-6. That was as close the Beach would get as Hawai'i scored the final three points to close out the win.
Parapunov led the Rainbow Warriors (11-0, 6-0 BW) with a match-high 27 kills along with seven blocks and two aces. He had to fill much of the void left by outside hitter
Colton Cowell, who sat out the match due to injury. Middle blocker
Patrick Gasman tallied a career-high 17 kills to go along with a team-high eight blocks.
UH extended its win streak to 12 matches and have won 11 straight home conference contests dating back to 2018.
Freshman
Spyros Chakas started in place of Cowell and finished with five kills, five digs, and four blocks. Outside hitter
Chaz Galloway added nine kills and eight digs while middle blocker
Max Rosenfeld got the start and had seven kills, hitting .778. Setter
Jakob Thelle dished out a career-high 59 assists and libero
Gage Worsley had a career-high 17 digs.
The Beach (3-3, 3-3 BW) was led by Spencer Olivier who finished with 25 kills and seven blocks. Middle blocker Simon Anderson had 11 of the team's 17 blocks and Honolulu native Ethan Siegfried hit .708 with 19 kills in 24 attack attempts.
UH still managed to hit .371 for the match compared to .307 for the Beach.
The Warriors next hit the road for a pair of Big West matches at CSUN, Friday, April 9 and Saturday, April 10 in Northridge, Calif.
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