Stanford ultimate challenge for UH

By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer

Off these islands, the prevailing volleyball wisdom is that fourth-ranked Stanford can beat top-ranked Hawai'i tonight (6 p.m.) at sold-out Stan Sheriff Center.

Closer to home, Hawai'i hasn't defeated Stanford in a decade. In that time, the Cardinal have won five national titles to the Rainbows' zip. They have beaten the 'Bows home and away. Their last two victories here came before packed houses and against unbeaten Hawai'i teams.

The similarities are startling. The opponents are startlingly familiar.

Stanford senior Logan Tom, whose father Mel was a gifted athlete at Maryknoll and went on to the NFL, is one of the best players in the world. She was slapping sets from Robyn Ah Mow in the last Olympics, and picking up national Player of the Year hardware last December.

In his previous volleyball life, second-year Stanford coach John Dunning made life miserable for Hawai'i when he took over as Pacific coach in 1985. That was the beginning of a wonderful rivalry between the schools.

Dunning left UOP last year for the one coaching position he couldn't refuse. He had lived in the Bay Area and his wife grew up there. They now live in a house two miles from his parents.

"It's been great, the personal side has been a really neat thing," Dunning says of his move. "It would have been very hard to make a career move to a place where we had no friends. I wouldn't have done it."

Dunning has been surprised to find less pressure to win on The Farm than there was in Stockton. There, UOP was the program's most successful team. At Stanford, it is one of many.

"There is pressure to win only because you don't want to be the team that doesn't," Dunning says. "And there's a little pressure because they've won so much.

"Then again, I'm coming off a year where we won, so I didn't feel a lot of pressure. In another year, I could be in misery."

A few months after he made the move, the Cardinal won the NCAA title, just as Dunning had done in his first season at UOP. The Tigers won again the next year. The Rainbow Wahine hope that pattern does not continue.

Hawai'i played most of these Cardinal in an April exhibition and won in four games. Stanford acclimated itself to the crowd — nearly 6,000 showed for a match that did not count — and the players got a good look at one another.

UH All-America outside hitters Lily Kahumoku and Kim Willoughby blasted 45 kills that night, more than neutralizing Stanford All-Americans Ogonna Nnamani and Tom. Maja Gustin finished the Cardinal off, celebrating her first match in the middle in more than a year by going an outrageous 14-for-22 with seven stuffs.

This season, the middle impact has been reversed. Lauren Duggins is in the midst of a brilliant season, but is the only healthy Hawai'i middle. Meanwhile, Stanford leads the country in blocking. It presents the ultimate challenge for a UH team that is first nationally in hitting, kills and assists.

But Stanford presents the ultimate challenge by just about every definition. Those 24 victories will mean little if Hawai'i can't handle its first real challenge of the season. And the Cardinal's three losses are all but erased with a victory tonight in the nation's toughest venue.

Stanford lost five seniors off its championship team, but that difference might only be skin deep. There are four starters back, including Tom, who missed the season's first seven matches so she could help the U.S. to a silver medal in the World Championships.

The Cardinal were swept in Florida during her absence, and have lost to Arizona and USC since she returned. Both Pac-10 losses were in five games, with the Trojans overcoming a 14-9 fifth-game deficit. Stanford avenged both those losses the past week.

Is the Cardinal's best yet to come?

"I don't know if this team is as good as last year's," Dunning said, "but I do know it is not close to how good it could be if it gets to play awhile longer. We're really improving right now. When someone of Logan's stature comes in late, it delays how good you can be in terms of playing together."

The Rainbow Wahine hope Stanford plays its best tonight, and that it is not good enough.