UH volleyball team prevails
Advertiser Staff
It would be inaccurate to assume the third-ranked University of Hawai'i men's volleyball team would waltz past perpetually struggling UC San Diego last night.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
No, as it turned out, it would be a slam dance.
San Diego's Chris Mortimer soars for a block attempt against UH's Jose Delgado.
In dominating every phase before 3,156 in the Stan Sheriff Center, the Warriors won, 30-15, 30-26, 30-24. They improved to 9-2 overall and 6-0 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, remaining in a tie for first place with top-ranked UCLA.
Only UH coach Mike Wilton's altruism and a lengthy intermission between the second and third games extended the match to 90 minutes.
Wilton did not play middle blocker Dejan Miladinovic and outside hitter Eyal Zimet, the Warriors' best server and passer. "They were on an emergency alert," said Wilton, noting neither was injured. "If we needed them, they were available."
The panic button was untouched, largely because of the Warriors' depth. Even in the third game, when Wilton opened with three freshmen and essentially two liberos (6-foot Jake Muise played outside hitter), the Warriors were unchallenged.
UH freshman outside hitter Jose Delgado hammered a team-high 13 kills and Tony Ching, in his second appearance since missing seven matches because of a muscle tear behind his right shoulder, added 10 kills, including a left-handed push shot that nearly hit the antennae.
"Slowly but surely I'm getting there," Ching said. "I have some things to work on. My blocking is still rusty and my passing is not all there yet. But I'm starting to get back in the groove."
Most of all, the Tritons had no answer for Delano Thomas, UH's 6-foot-7 freshman middle blocker. The strategy was to set high to Thomas, then watch him use his rabbit-punch swings to treat the volleyball like a pinata.
"He's a hitter who hits really high," UH setter Kimo Tuyay said. "You have to give him the ball very high. Some days he's feeling a lot better and he feels he can hit over anybody. This was one of those days. He was hitting over everybody."
Four of Thomas' 11 kills ricocheted into the stands.
"He's a handful, and (the Tritons) weren't very big, so it was really hard to stop that guy," Wilton said.
Said Thomas: "It's all in the setting and passing. You can't hit without setting and passing. Our setters were really great. They kept giving me the ball in the right spot. There's nothing you can do but hit it perfect. It's a great feeling to hit when the sets and passes are perfect. Words can't describe it."
The Tritons scrambled for solutions. Unable to hit over the blocks — they played 6-foot-1 and 5-11 hitters — the Triton outside hitters tried to angle shots, hoping to score points off of deflections. But Delgado, Ching and Tuyay teamed with the middle players to block accurately.
When the Tritons went to the middle, sometimes looping a hitter from the outside, they ran into streetcars named Thomas and Brian Nordberg. Outside hitter Eric Perrine had some success, amassing 16 kills, but that was hardly enough.
"Obviously, you look out there and Hawai'i is better than we are," Triton coach Ron Larsen said of his team, which does not offer scholarships and is 5-172 in MPSF matches in the past 10 years. "They're more athletic, they're stronger, they're bigger. They're all of the things we'd like to be.
"They have interchangeable parts. Zimet doesn't start, but they put in Tony Ching, who is good or better than Zimet. They don't start Dejan, but Thomas is very, very good. They're deep, probably the deepest they've ever been. If they only had six or seven good players, there could be a letdown. But they bring in people who want to play, that want to hammer you, and there's no letdown."
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