Match Stats
- #4 Hawaii def. #6 UCLA 3-1 (26-28, 25-23, 25-21, 25-18)
- Hawaii moves to 23-4 (13-4 MPSF); UCLA falls to 17-8 (10-7 MPSF)
- Los Angeles, California
- Attendance: 1,169
- Box Score
The 4th-ranked Hawaii Rainbow Warriors beat the 6th-ranked UCLA Bruins on Friday 3-1 to lock up home-court advantage as the #3 seed in the upcoming round of the upcoming MPSF conference tournament. Given the travel demands, home-court advantage, in theory, is especially valuable for Hawaii. By virtue of the win, they also locked up UC Irvine’s right to host the quarterfinals.
The game was the first of a two-night double-header for the teams, and snapped a 7-game winning streak for the resurgent UCLA Bruins, who have looked like a new team now that they’re fully healthy again.
Hawaii didn’t have any single player offensively carry an overwhelming portion of the load, with 6 players recording at least 6 kills in the game. That was led by Kuono Fey, who had 13 kills (6 errors, 28 attacks, .250) to lead the way. Stijn van Tilburg, the team’s top offensive player this season, had just 7 in 2 sets played. For van Tilburg, after only 5 kills against CSUN in the team’s last game on March 25th, he failed to get double digit kills in back-to-back games for the first time since the season’s first two games.
Van Tilburg was replaced off-the-bench by freshman Rado Parapunov, who put up 9 kills, 4 digs, and 2 blocks.
The Bruins, meanwhile, were carried offensively by Jake Arnitz, who had 20 kills – a plateau he’s conquered now three times this season. With just 5 errors and 38 attacaks, Arnitz had a .395 hitting percentage in the game; the rest of his team hit just .176 combined.
8 of Arnitz’s 20 kills came in the first set, where UCLA fought back an early Hawaii rally to win in extra points. As the game wore on, however, his contributions became fewer. In the 2nd set, he had 7 kills, in the 3rd just 4 kills, and by the final, and most dominant for Hawaii, set, he recorded only a single kill.
With the loss, that officially makes this weekend the final home-stand for UCLA’s seniors. Among those is Hagen Smith, who had 27 assists, 10 digs, and 3 kills in the game for the Bruins.
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