The Spartans (14-12, 5-8), who have lost their last six, never got that close. They did get much closer than they probably should have in Game 2.

Hawai'i piled up points through the first game — often with Alicia Arnott serving — and second — often with Arnott hitting. But just when it looked like the Spartans were going to go away, UH inexplicably tried to beat them out the door.

Down 29-16 in Game 2, San Jose erased 11 game points and forced Hawai'i to burn both timeouts. Suddenly, UH couldn't pass or hit and Sarah Christensen, a 5-foot-9 sophomore, became the first Spartan to poke holes in the Rainbow roof.

"Hawai'i pretty much thought they had the game. At 29, most teams do," said SJSU libero Jessie Shull, who served up 10 straight points and finished with a match-high 19 digs. "We weren't ready to give up, weren't ready to stop playing and I just kept the ball in and allowed our defense and blocking and our offense to do the rest of the work and it turned out pretty nicely."

After UH coach Dave Shoji called his final timeout, at 29-26, the small Spartans got their first stuff of the night. Finally, Arnott slapped down her ninth kill of the game to end it.

"That's embarrassing," said Shoji, who admitted he started to walk out of the gym for the mid-match break about six times. "I think everybody thought someone else was going to put the last ball down. ... It was an unbelievable stretch."

Shoji called the disappearing act an "aberration" and it was. As young as they are, the Rainbows have never lost 11 points in a row this season. But they have tended to take siestas. Somehow, they always wake up in time to terminate teams.

The Jekyll-and-Hyde show is one they would like to close. "We were basically killing them tonight and we just let up," Arnott said. "We need to push all the way through until it's done."

There was little drama otherwise. The Spartans, with just two 6-foot starters, came here in a slump coach Craig Choate said started 10 days ago, for no apparent reason. The spectacular second-game rally might be precisely what his team needed for next week's WAC Tournament.

"Maybe the good thing tonight is we 'brought it' again," Choate said. "It wasn't enough to beat the No. 2 team in the nation on their homecourt. Big stinking deal, to be perfectly honest. Can we beat somebody else at the WAC Tournament? Yeah, if we can do this again."

Arnott led the 'Bows with 19 kills and didn't have a hitting error until deep into Game 2. It was reminiscent of the SMU match, when she had 30 kills. Arnott put balls down from all angles and at a dizzying variety of velocities last night.

"Every once in awhile your blood gets flowing and you're not thinking about the time of the set. Something just clicks and it feels really good," she said. "That was one of those matches tonight."

Susie Boogaard added 13 kills and Victoria Prince 10, on .588 hitting. Prince was in on half Hawai'i's 13 blocks. SJSU got 10 kills apiece from Christensen and freshman Jennifer Senftleben.

Freshman Kari Gregory started in the middle for UH and was in on all four of the first-game stuffs. Freshman Juliana Sanders came in for four kills and two blocks in Game 2. Senior captain Melody Eckmier replaced Sanders in Game 3 and Cayley Thurlby came in to set. The two Game-3 substitutions were in Shoji's original plan and he was sticking to it, despite the mayhem at the end of Game 2.

"Basically, we were supposed to win that game 30-17. At that point it would have been considered a blowout," Shoji said. "I had my mind set on putting them in and I couldn't penalize them for that stretch so I put them in. I had confidence we could win the third."