LOS ANGELES — Hawai’i ended the UC Irvine men’s volleyball team’s late-season run on Monday evening, beating the Anteaters 3-1 (15-25, 25-18, 25-18, 25-20) in the NCAA championship match at Pauley Pavilion.
It’s Hawai’i’s third national title in the past six years but its first since 2022. The second-seeded Rainbow Warriors (30-5) beat third-seeded Big West Conference rival Long Beach State in the semifinals to reach the final for the fifth time in the past seven tournaments (there was no tournament in 2020).
Freshman Andrej Jokanovic led unseeded UC Irvine (21-9) with 13 kills and three blocks on .229 hitting, and Will D’Arcy added nine kills and four digs. Trevor Clark had six kills and six blocks and Micah Goss had six blocks and three aces.
Clark and Jokanovic were each named to the All-Tournament Team.
The Anteaters opened the first set with a 5-1 scoring run, seemingly oblivious to the crowd of Hawai’i fans that dominated most of the arena. UCI was the more efficient team in the first set, hitting .562 compared to the Warriors’ .167.
UCI also committed just one service error, while Hawai’i had five.
Goss served up the Anteaters’ first ace of the day, and it pushed them to a 16-5 advantage roughly halfway through the set. Hawai’i countered with a kill by Kristian Titriyski and an ace from Tread Rosenthal, but two service errors in a matter of three serves stalled any momentum the Warriors were looking to create.
Jokanovic had two kills from the left side to close out the first set with a 25-15 win.
The Anteaters fell behind early in the second set and couldn’t overcome the adjustments Hawai’i made to stay in system. A 3-0 scoring run got UCI within four points of tying the set, and Dos Pueblos product Goss’ strong performance late in the set helped, too.
Andreas Brinck set Goss for a scoring strike, then he teamed up with Cameron Kosty for a block that closed the gap to 23-17, but Hawai’i ultimately won the frame, 25-18.
The Big West opponents went point-for-point in the third set until the Warriors strung together four unanswered points to pull ahead 15-11. Louis Sakanoko appeared to be dealing with an apparent wrist injury, but it didn’t deter him from sending a kill down the middle to cap the scoring run.
Hawai’i was hitting .359 by the end of the set – which was good enough to make up for the 15 total service errors it had accumulated – and won it 25-18.
Celebratory confetti cannons were rolled out just as Hawai’i claimed a 14-11 lead in the fourth set. A block by Clark and a D’Arcy ace nearly caught the Anteaters up before the Warriors finished off the match.
UCI received one of the at-large spots for the tournament, which was expanded from nine to 12 teams this season. The Anteaters beat unseeded Penn State, stunned top-seeded UCLA in a regional final then took out fourth-seeded Ball State in a semifinal on Saturday.
More to come on this story.