"So it's disappointing, but it's not a disappointment."

The tear-stained faces of senior Teisa Fotu and sophomore Kanoe Kamana'o were hard to read, but their words were easy to understand. After losing the first two games last night, they knew it would go five — for the seventh time this season. What they didn't know, because this team had refused to lose all year, is that their unbeaten season was about to come to an end.

"We're mentally tough," Fotu said. "We've been able to come back. We stay in there, stay focused. But at this point the teams are good, they are just as focused as we are.

"I know every play the game is on the line, everything is on the line. You've just got to fight. Just got to fight."

Hawai'i went out in a blaze of comebacks. It erased the two-game deficit first, bringing the versatile Fotu into the front row. The change gave UH a look it had never practiced, with Alicia Arnott passing for the first time this season and walk-ons Kelly Ong and Raeceen Woolford putting on the libero jersey.

"I was just thinking one game at a time," Kamana'o said. "After Game 2 we had nothing to lose. Dave changed things up and we had fun out there. I think that was the most important thing for this team, was just to have fun. We did."

Shoji criticized himself for not bringing another libero jersey on the trip for Tara Hittle, the player Fotu replaced in the front row. That limited Hittle to three serve-receive rotations.

The swarm of new looks was necessary because regular libero Ashley Watanabe broke her hand last week, moving Fotu — the only experienced outside hitter on the bench — into her position. Then Hittle struggled on offense and Shoji made the switch after Game 2.

The change, and the Rainbow Wahine's resilience, helped them rally.

Shoji also brought freshman Juliana Sanders into the middle. Wisconsin put just one blocker on Sanders, and she slammed a career-high 14 kills. But at 19-all in Game 5, the Badgers sent over another blocker and Sanders got stuffed.

A serve later, after two Hawai'i serves for the match and five for Wisconsin, it was over.

"Obviously we had our chances," Shoji said. "We served for the match, we could have won. We just didn't make a play. We couldn't stop (Jill) Odenthal when it counted. I can't give you any reason that we didn't win this match as opposed to winning some of the other matches. I thought the players played just as hard.

"We were not tired, the travel didn't bother us. We just didn't make that one play that we needed to win the match. In the past we've converted all those plays. Sure, Wisconsin is a very good team and they made the plays, two of them, at the end of the match that we didn't make. It came down to two plays."

Notes

By the numbers: Hawai'i is now 15-6 in regional semifinals, 56-20 in the NCAA Tournament and 30-5 against Big Ten teams. Wisconsin leads the series with UH, 2-1. The Badgers and Florida (3-2) are the only teams in the country that lead the series with UH.

Roomy: UH coach Dave Shoji's in-laws from Fargo, N.D., rented a 60-passenger bus and rode to Green Bay, stopping in Minneapolis along the way to pick up friends. There were nine in the bus. The rental fee for the bus was the same as three airfares from Fargo.