If winning the Western Athletic Conference is high on your volleyball wish list, Hawai'i coach Dave Shoji has a team for you. It opens practice this morning in preparation for the season-opener Aug. 29 against defending national champion Penn State.

If easing the pain of last season's final-match flop, finding a way back to the final four — or even the NCAA regional — and ending the year far, far above No. 18 in the rankings are more of a focus, hold on for a wild Rainbow Wahine ride.

This team could look very much like last year's, with only Juliana Sanders missing from the starting lineup. It could look almost nothing like last year, with 14 legitimate candidates for seven starting spots, including Nickie Thomas, who might have been the best of the 'Bows two years — and two knee surgeries — ago.

The questions that trouble Shoji most also taunt him with potential.

His team's ballhandling skills should be dramatically improved, particularly if Kamehameha graduate Kanani Herring's breathtaking versatility makes an immediate transition/impact. But if the Rainbows cannot get over the ball-control issues of the past two years, dreams of a quicker offense — their only shot at beating physically superior teams — will shatter.

"Our season depends on ball control," Shoji said flatly. "I think we can win 85 percent of our games just hitting the ball high and playing straight up. It's the other 15 percent, where the other team will be more physical than us, that we have to pass and play faster. If we just line up, we'll be overpowered by four or five teams we play this year."

Hints to the 'Bows' ballhandling fortunes should come quickly. The Nittany Lions return all seven starters from their NCAA championship team, including four All-Americans.

The slew of possible UH starters might provide Shoji with his ultimate quandary. Every team covets a roster full of gifted players, but when more than half will have to watch, group dynamics get dicey.

Shoji, while preaching more patience, feels it is imperative to set a lineup early and give priority in practice to the starters, particularly at setter. Those that don't start will have to deal with it gracefully, which he admits wasn't always the case last year. Coaches and players are talking about "attitude adjustment."

"We've got to follow through with an attitude change, not allow outside influences to affect the team or team chemistry," Shoji said. "We've got to be strong leaders and we intend to be. The players have to just play, accept their roles.

"We've got a lot of competition for a lot of spots. People in that supporting role ... I'm not saying they have to be happy, but they still have to work hard and accept it for the team's sake. If we have anybody that is selfish then we'll have a problem."

Maybe not now, when the depth of talent can make people giddy. Hawai'i has supplemented last year's outside hitters with Herring and redshirt freshman Stephanie Ferrell, probably the team's most imposing terminator. Thomas, 6-foot-4 freshman Brittany Hewitt and Catherine Fowler, who started for Arkansas the past two years, are now in the middle mix. Roosevelt graduate Emily Maeda and Samantha Prather, starting libero on one of the country's best club teams, will walk-on.

"Everybody understands the situation," Shoji insisted. "That's great for motivation and great for training. Everybody wants to be that person that's on the court, so right now it's a real positive thing. We can be a cohesive group or we can be a group that's a little split. The coaching staff, as the leaders of the team, will not allow that to happen."

Again. When it kicked in last season the Rainbow Wahine looked like they were trying out for parts in "Lost." Ball control and communication problems led to a punchless .240 hitting percentage — 20 points lower than the previous year, which was 20 point below the year before. Their defense dropped nearly a block a game (3.52 to 2.76).

They missed the regionals for the first time in a decade and, despite winning their 10th consecutive WAC championship, lost to four unranked teams; in the previous 25 years they had lost to a total of seven.

Their lack of chemistry and consistency was most apparent, and punishing, in the NCAA's second round, when Middle Tennessee took them out. Gallingly, the unheralded team did it with precisely the type of quick attack Hawai'i tried, and failed, to run the past two seasons.

"Hawai'i should not lose to Middle Tennessee," said Shoji, who has won four national titles in his first 33 seasons. "So that's been a great motivation for us."

Hang on. The season starts with five matches against NCAA Tournament teams from last year and the return of Hilo's Reed Sunahara and former associate coach Charlie Wade. It ends with a Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo) doubleheader and the WAC Tournament at Stan Sheriff Center.

From there, the Rainbows hope to be NCAA road warriors, with a slick offense and a slicker attitude that can take them to Omaha, Neb., and a shot at that fifth national championship.