Reed Sunahara was into his 40s and far removed from the days he dominated Hawai'i volleyball, basketball and baseball at Hilo High before he felt comfortable calling Rainbow Wahine volleyball coach Dave Shoji a close friend. Today at 5 p.m. they will be on opposite sides of the net when Sunahara takes his Cincinnati team up against 11th-ranked Hawai'i in the 14th annual Honolulu Advertiser Challenge at Stan Sheriff Center.

Sunahara, in his ninth year as Cincinnati's head coach, has seen Shoji and talked with him since those days at Hilo. They would bump into each other while Sunahara was in the midst of an All-America career at UCLA, where his teams won three NCAA titles, and during his six-year stint as Al Scates' Bruin assistant.

They kept touch when Sunahara started coaching women at Toledo, moved to Cincinnati to assist former Rainbow Wahine Laura (Phillips) Alford, then took over when she left in 2000. But it wasn't until a few years ago that Sunahara felt close enough to have dinner with Shoji here and on recruiting trips, "hang out" and call each other on a fairly regular basis.

"He's been a good friend, a mentor actually," Sunahara said. "It took a while. He's a legend, Dave's a legend. I respect him. I think he's done a great job here and I think he's one of the top coaches in the country. To be with him and hang out and think he's a peer ... sometimes I've got to pinch myself and think is this really happening?"

As a player, Sunahara was a terminator at UCLA until a terrible motorcycle accident left him with a fractured left leg in five places and transformed him into an imaginative attacker with brilliant ballhandling skills. Now he takes ideas from many coaches to mold his unique style. Every match he coaches is also a class, with Scates, Shoji, Russ Rose, Andy Banachowski and pretty much every colleague serving as professors.

"I've learned just by watching the way Dave coaches," Sunahara said. "I like his demeanor. I think his relationship with his players is good. That goes hand in hand. They respect him and he respects the players. I like that. That way they play harder for him.

"I try to put all those guys together and come up with my own game plan. Every year is different. ... If I stop learning, then I'll never be a better coach. I think we take different parts of different things. If Hawai'i is doing something I like, I might say let's try that if it will help our team. Then I'm a better coach. I'm making my program better."

Cincinnati has been on the fringe of the rankings since Alford and Sunahara settled in. He took the Bearcats to four straight NCAA tournaments and three Conference USA regular-season titles, but they haven't reached the postseason since 2003 and are still looking to make an impact in their new conference, the Big East, with Notre Dame and Louisville.

Sunahara has 11 players back from last year's 19-12 team, which failed to win 20 matches for the first time in more than a decade. Senior Jessie Nevitt is a three-time all-conference middle and Stephanie Niemer was last season's Big East Freshman of the Year. Sunahara also kept Missy Harpenau, www.prepvolleyball.com's 2007 national Player of the Year, home.

He believes his team is better, deeper and more physical than last year. Shoji agrees — "They have got a lot of size" — and is convinced his team is also better. On that, they also agree.

"I know Hawai'i is faster, stronger, looks better than last year with Kanani (Herring). With her it's the intangibles," Sunahara said. "Ballhandling is where it starts. The game now is so fast you've got to minimize your mistakes and it starts with ball control. Hawai'i is up there now because they are a better ball control team — especially with Kanani. She just brings the level of everyone up."

Sunahara is happy to have the opportunity to bring his team here, play two ranked teams and soak up as much of Hawai'i as he can before another Midwest winter. Good people make Cincinnati a good place, he says, but there are no other similarities to the paradise he left long ago, and still deeply misses.

He would be one of many interested when his "mentor," who will be 62 in December, retires. But Sunahara says if he was "The Man" in Manoa "I would be calling him everyday for help and ask him how he did it for that long."

He is realistic about what it will take to make that leap — in Cincinnati and back "home."

"Dave is still young and has that drive," Sunahara said. "But if the opportunity arises I'd be very interested. A lot of people want this job and I've got to prove myself first. I don't think it's about me. It's about my teams. We've won conferences, yeah, recruited good players. But we've got to get ... these guys have won national championships and been to final fours and regionals and all that stuff. I haven't been there yet. That's one of my goals, to take our team there someday."