Hawaii men’s volleyball coach Charlie Wade has said his team is a national title contender all along, and even after falling short of a conference championship, the Rainbow Warriors will have a chance to prove their coach right,
Seeded fourth, UH (26-5) earned one of two at-large bids into the six-team NCAA tournament field and will take on No. 5 Penn State (21-10) on May 2 in Columbus, Ohio. The winner draws top-seeded and defending champion Ohio State two days later in the semifinals.
Mountain Pacific Sports Federation teams make up half the field. Coming off a four-set victory against Hawaii in the conference championship game, second-seeded Long Beach State gets a bye into the semifinals and will take on the winner of a first-round match between BYU and Barton, champions of Conference Carolina.
Making its second NCAA appearance in three seasons, the Rainbow Warriors face a familiar foe. It’s played the Nittany Lions, champions of the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, in all four of is four previous NCAA appearances. Penn State won in 2015 to even the series 2-2.
Overall, the schools have met 23 times, with the Warriors holding a 14-9 advantage.
Ka‘aua returns in baseball win
Hilo High graduate Chayce Ka‘aua got his first start of the season Sunday for Hawaii and went 1 for 4 as the Rainbow Warriors beat Cal Davis 3-1 to avoid a three-game sweep in Honolulu.
Neil Uskali worked 8 1/3 strong innings, striking out six, to improve to 6-2.
Dylan Vchulek collected three hits for the Rainbow Warriors (22-14, 4-5 Big West), singling in the first and scoring on Kekai Rios’ sacrifice fly and driving in a run in the fourth with an infield hit.
Uskali didn’t need much else, allowing only five hits with no walks before Dylan Thomas came on to get the final two outs for his fifth save.
Ka‘aua had not played this season while recovering from a hernia, the Star-Advertiser reported, but he made his debut Saturday with two appearances off the bench in a sweep by Cal Davis (12-20, 5-7), driving in two runs with a double in the second game and catching.
Ka‘aua hit .260 as a freshman in 2016 with a team-high nine doubles, but he missed 27 games last season with a broken finger.
While Ka‘aua has been injured, Rios, a sophomore, appears to have entrenched himself as the everyday catcher, batting a team-best .339 this season.
