Hawai'i outlasts Stanford in five

By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer

Second-ranked Hawai'i had to wait a dozen years to beat Stanford in volleyball and nearly five years to fulfill its fans with what coach Dave Shoji characterized as a "huge win" at home.

KIM WILLOUGHBY

The outcome delighted the 7,587 ultimately ecstatic fans at Stan Sheriff Center.

After 2 hours and 46 minutes, five players had double-doubles, including the night's unlikely hero, UH senior right-side hitter Nohea Tano. She went for a career-high 13 killsÊwithout an error and 10 digs. When Stanford, leading 14-13, served for the match, it was Tano who symbolically crushed its hopes.

"Tonight Nohea changed the game," said UH All-American Kim Willoughby, whose 28 kills and 18 digs helped her earn her third Most Outstanding Player honor in as many weeks. "That's something we needed. Nohea adding 13 kills was not expected. She was one-on-one almost every time.

"You have to respect her. If you don't respect her she gets a kill. If you do respect her you leave me and Lily (Kahumoku) or (Lauren) Duggins. This is going to help us — going five with them and people seeing her 13 kills and thinking they have to play us more honest now."

But that was with Olympian Logan Tom, the two-time collegiate player of the year.

This is a very different Stanford, which it painfully discovered when it got blitzed by third-ranked Florida last Saturday.

The Cardinal matured admirably in the interim, with second-team All-American Ogonna Nnamani (28 kills, 15 digs) taking over at crunch time last night.

"Our team is searching to find out who we are and we found out a lot about that tonight," Stanford coach John Dunning said. "Post-Logan you've got to play differently, depend on different people. Ogonna was a very forceful presence on our side. So we're just learning."

Hawai'i won the fifth game despite losing four of the first five points.

It was tied nine times, the last at 14 on Tano's kill. Kahumoku, who couldn't find her way through Stanford's imposing block early, put down the final two points.

"Lily was a good example of the match — we started hot, we struggled in the middle, obviously Game 4 we didn't play well. But then Game 5 Lily was there for us," Shoji said. "That's the kind of effort you have to have in a long match. Things don't go your way the whole time, but you've got to gut it out and just keep banging and hope that something good happens."

Stanford was so dominant in the series recently that when the Rainbows won the opening game, it was the first they had taken off the Cardinal since 1997.

QUICK SETS: Utah State (6-3) took third place with a 30-20, 26-30, 30-21, 30-26 victory over Weber State (3-6). The teams played two weeks ago with USU sweeping the Wildcats on their court in Ogden, Utah. ... Lily Kahumoku moved into fifth on the UH career kill list, passing Therese Crawford. ... Kahumoku also had a career high 21 digs. ... Lauren Duggins' four solo stuffs was a career high.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8043.