UH defeats Pepperdine to win first NCAA title
Associated Press
Hawai'i's Costas Theocharidis spikes a ball past Pepperdine's Lance Walker in yesterday's NCAA men's volleyball championship final.
Advertiser Staff
The University of Hawai'i men finally have an NCAA title to call their own.
The UH volleyball team made history yesterday, winning the school's first NCAA men's championship by upsetting No. 1-ranked Pepperdine in University Park, Pa.
The scores were 29-31, 31-29, 30-21, 30-24.
UH, which has been competing in Division I athletics for more than 30 years, came painfully close twice, finishing runner-up to Arizona in baseball in 1980 and to UCLA in volleyball in 1996. The UH women have three NCAA titles, all in volleyball (1982, '83, '87).
This season, the Warriors did it the hard way, entering the final four as an at-large team, beating the host team, Penn State, and then stunning a team that had beaten them three times.
Just last Saturday, No. 2-ranked UH lost in four games to Pepperdine in the the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation championship. But the previous three games were played in Malibu, home of the Waves.
The UH roster includes players from seven countries.
"We're the United Nations," middle blocker Dejan Miladinovic said. "Hawai'i is a multi-national community, and I think we represent it. We have people from all over the globe. But we speak the same language, the language of volleyball."
The UH team returns to Hawai'i at 6:33 p.m. today aboard United Airlines Flight 61, according to UH officials.
