The UH-Hilo volleyball team struggled with the first-touch bread-and-butter basics — serving and passing — in a four-set loss to Hawaii Pacific.
The Sharks played cleaner ball to defeat the Vulcans 15-25, 25-21, 25-14, 25-21 on Thursday night before 501 fans at UHH Gym.
It was UHH student appreciation night, and the partisan college kids in red T-shirts probably wondered what went wrong after the first set.
“After the first game, HPU served and passed way better, and that dictated the offense and their defensive end,” UHH coach Tino Reyes said. “They were able to stack their block on our left-side hitters.”
Morgan Lees had 14 kills and hit .263 to lead the Vuls (4-3, 2-2 PacWest), who saw their two-match winning streak snapped. Marley Strand-Nicolaisen, the other left-side hitter, had nine kills and a .156 hitting clip, quite close to the team’s .154 attack percentage.
HPU (10-3, 5-0) remained unbeaten in conference play, and reeled off its eighth straight win. The Sharks didn’t exactly start a fire with their hitting. They had a .212 hitting percentage.
But the stat that really stood out was UHH setter Sienna Davis’ 13 digs, second on the team and next to libero Mina Green’s 16 digs.
It’s never a good thing when a setter is digging so many balls. That’s because in a 5-1 offense the setter is supposed to be dishing the ball to hitters. The setter is also supposed to be the best-handler because she touches the ball more than anyone else.
HPU setter Tenika Wentworth had 39 assists and just six digs. If the Vuls are tired this morning, it’s for good reason. Wentworth gave UHH’s front row a good workout running around.
In comparison, Davis had 28 assists, and, partly due to wobbly passing, often set the ball to waiting Sharks, who sometimes didn’t need to move their double teams one millimeter.
Davis didn’t set the ball inside the 10-foot line three consecutive times. Wentworth made her living there, and fed the ball to, basically, three hitters: Elizabeth Culpepper (18 kills, .326), Pomai Recca (17 kills, .238) and right-side hitter Kasey Thompson (11 kills, .292).
The Sharks had no middle attack. However, they didn’t really need one. They got more digs than the Vuls, 57-50, which generated far more kills, 53-40.
HPU libero Amanda Moriarty had a match-high 22 digs. But she struggled in serve-receive, shanking balls too close to the net for Wentworth, who turned lemon passes into easy swings and lemonade for her Shark hitters.
Too often, the Vuls hit and missed with preparation and execution, the philosophy of winning. They were in the right place to make a play but didn’t. For example, in the fourth set, a Vul had coverage for a tip shot, but she froze and the ball went down.
Reyes liked his team’s effort. The execution wasn’t always there. But he felt optimistic.
“We’ll get better,” he said. “We have to improve on our serving and passing. That’s for sure.”
