Posted on: Saturday, December 13, 2003

UH makes sweeping statement

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

OK, so when does this NCAA Women's Volleyball Tournament really start for the University of Hawai'i?

For two weeks, we've been told that the three-month cruise the Rainbow Wahine have been on is over now that the postseason is here. Head coach Dave Shoji has looked solemnly into cameras and tape recorders and said his team will have to be at its best to advance. "I expect it to be tougher than most people think," he said.

Other teams have come into the Stan Sheriff Center and promised to give the Rainbow Wahine a match.

Not that you'd know it by most of what has transpired on the TerraFlex since the regular season ended.

Last night, for the third consecutive match in this NCAA Championship, and sixth time this postseason, the Wahine took somebody out in three consecutive games.

This time it was 15th-ranked Illinois' turn, 30-21, 30-22, 33-31 — and Hawai'i was without injured middle blocker Maja Gustin, to boot.

For all but some 11th-hour mini-drama, it might have as well have been Fresno State or Southern Methodist — again. Just call the latest victims Cal State-Champagne or Tulsa-Urbana.

Not until the third game last night at 3-all were the Wahine even tied. Only briefly, and never by more than two points, did UH trail.

Rarely was the Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 8,435 even moved to chant that familiar rallying cry of "Let's Go 'Bows!" to fire up the home team. And, even with the match at a one-point difference late in the third game, so confident were the faithful that some even made their way to the exits.

Unless 11th-ranked Georgia Tech, an impressive 30-25, 20-30, 30-24, 30-23 winner over California last night, can do something that has so far eluded Tulsa, Nevada, San Jose State, Idaho, Brigham Young and the Illini, the Wahine will fly to Dallas untouched.

Unless the Yellow Jackets can take it to four games — or beyond — it will be the first time the Wahine have gone through a postseason to the final four without giving up a game since 1987. Not coincidentally, perhaps, also the last time they won a national championship.

"(Let's) play the second team, already," a fan screamed midway through the second game.

After breezing through the WAC, where they have won 90 matches in a row, the expectation was that the Wahine would be tested before they got to Dallas, the site of the final four, next week. Indeed, the hope has been that somebody, anybody, would challenge them before they get to Reunion Arena, if just for the experience and novelty of it.

So much for the vaunted Big Ten, where the Illini finished second. The conference placed a tournament-best six schools in the NCAAs. UH got taken to four games by Nevada in the regular season.

When the UH pep band struck up the theme to "Mission Impossible" in the first game last night, it was making a musical statement. Not unlike the one the Wahine have been making in a postseason where they have rarely been challenged.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.