HONOLULU — The University of Hawai'i men's volleyball team's two-year reign in the OUTRIGGER Big West Men's Volleyball Championship ended on Friday with a semifinal loss to UC Irvine at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
 
After pulling out two high-tension sets — including a 70-point battle in the second — second-seeded UC Irvine (19-9) pulled away in the third to close out a 26-24, 36-34, 25-15 sweep of the third-seeded Rainbow Warriors (23-7) and advance to the tournament final.
 
UC Irvine will face top-seeded Long Beach State for the conference title at 7 p.m. Saturday. LBSU will be seeking its first title since winning the inaugural Big West tournament in 2018. UC Irvine reached last year's final before falling to Hawai'i. The winner will also claim the Big West's automatic bid to the National Collegiate Men's Volleyball Championship, which will be held at the Walter Pyramid in Long Beach.
 
The eight-team NCAA Tournament bracket will be revealed on Sunday with the selection show streamed on ncaa.com at 10 a.m. Hawai'i time.
 
UH had won the previous two Big West titles and had reached the final in four of the tournament's first five years. The Warriors made a push to extend their title defense on Friday with an early surge led by middle blocker Kurt Nusterer's six-point service turn that included two aces. UC Irvine answered with a five-point run and there were six ties before the Anteaters closed the set on a 4-1 run.

The drama only escalated from there in a second set that featured 17 ties and eight lead changes. The teams combine to fight off 13 set points before UCI finally converted on its fifth serve for the set with outside hitter Hilir Henno getting his 20^th kill of the match to fall. In all, the Anteaters denied nine UH set points before taking a 2-0 lead in the match.
 
The Anteaters led for much of the third and then closed out the match with a 7-1 run to knock off the Warriors for the first time in four meetings in the conference tournament and evened this season's series with UH at 2-2.
 
UH freshman Louis Sakanoko led the Warriors with 12 kills and Keoni Thiim added 11 to go along with a team-high eight digs.
 
Senior Chaz Galloway came off the bench to finish with nine kills with one error in 15 swings to hit .533 in his final appearance in the Stan Sheriff Center. Middle blocker Guilherme Voss added nine kills in his farewell match before the home crowd.

Nusterer sparked the Warriors early and finished with eight kills in 11 swings with two aces and three blocks. Freshman setter Tread Rosenthal distributed 42 assists and had seven digs.
 
UH had four aces as a team and committed 19 service errors.
 
Henno put away a match-high 24 kills on 45 attempts with one error to hit .511. UC Irvine setter and former UH libero Brett Sheward directed an Anteaters attack that hit a collective .376 and finished with 38 assists and 10 digs.
 
Long Beach State held off CSUN in four sets in the opener of Friday's semifinal doubleheader to advance to the third time. Clarke Godbold led the Beach (24-2) with 18 kills in 38 attempts and Sotiris Siapanis added 13 in LBSU's 25-23, 22-25, 25-20, 25-22 win. Jalen Phillips led fifth-seeded CSUN (13-16) with a match-high 19 kills.