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Hawaii continued its mastery in its men’s volleyball series with UC Santa Barbara on Saturday to complete a perfect run on the road in the regular season.
The top-ranked Rainbow Warriors started fast and pulled off a comeback late in the third set in a 25-19, 25-21, 29-27 sweep of the host Gauchos at Rob Gymnasium in Santa Barbara, Calif., to claim the program’s 15th consecutive win over UCSB.
The Warriors also finished 9-0 in their regular-season road matches, winning all 27 sets they’ve played away from Manoa.
UH (22-2, 5-1 Big West) remained second in the conference standings entering a series with Big West leader and fifth-ranked UC Irvine (16-6, 6-0) next week at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
Coming off three tightly contested sets with UCSB on Friday, the Warriors dominated early in Saturday’s rematch and opposite Dimitrios Mouchlias put away six of his match-high 14 kills in the second set.
The Warriors played from behind for much of the third set and trailed 21-17 before putting together an 8-3 run highlighted by three kills from Mouchlias, an ace from Spyros Chakas and a block by Jakob Thelle and Kurt Nusterer. UCSB had two opportunities to hand UH its first set loss on the road this season, but served well long on both occasions.
The Gauchos survived two match points before Chakas got a touch off the block to put away match point for the second consecutive match.
The Warriors hit .418 for the match and had six aces to overcome an otherwise shaky night from the service line with 18 errors.
“We served really poorly all night,” UH coach Charlie Wade said in a Zoom call. “Some of that’s on me because we talked about their serve receive formations are the deepest we’ve ever seen … and we talked about it and we tried to drop in a few short in front of them and we ended up missing.
“But some really nice turns late … and our guys are just really focused late in the set. You get inside 20 and we played at a really high level.”
UH senior Kana’i Akana came off the bench to deliver an ace and forced an overpass in a key service turn to help UH close to 17-16 in the third set.
Mouchlias committed just one attack error in his 25 attempts for a .520 hitting performance and outside hitter Chaz Galloway added 12 kills in 19 swings to hit a season-high .526 and served up two aces.
Chakas also had two aces and finished with nine kills and setter Thelle distributed 36 assists while contributing two kills and a one-handed solo block in the opening set.
Middle blocker Guilherme Voss had seven kills in nine errorless swings. Nusterer made his fourth start of the season and finished with four kills in nine attempts and was in on four blocks playing in place of Cole Hogland. UH finished with 7.5 blocks to UCSB’s two.
“He’s been blocking a ton of balls in practice and just wanted to give him a chance to get out there and see if he can touch some balls in the match,” Wade said. “He got a few early and he’s going to be very good, so getting him a chance to get on the court in some meaningful minutes is important.”
Punahou graduate Ryan Wilcox shook off a slow start to lead UCSB (5-15, 1-6) with 12 kills on 20 attacks in a .450 hitting performance and added two aces and seven digs. Opposite Nick Amoruso finished with 11 kills in 35 attempts.
UH hit .419 in the series with the Gauchos and .425 over four matches in back-to-back road trips to Cal State Northridge and UCSB over the last two weekends.
“Santa Barbara’s good team, they just don’t have many wins to show for it,” Wade said. “Thrilled with the wins and proud of our guys to come on the road and get the job done.”
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