Box Score
HONOLULU – The University of Hawai'i men's volleyball team and Pepperdine went the distance in a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Tournament first round match with the Warriors winning a five-set thriller, 24-30, 30-24, 30-26, 22-30, 18-16 Saturday night at the Stan Sheriff Center.
UH (19-9) advances to the MPSF Championship semifinals Thursday, April 29 against top-seeded Stanford in Stanford, Calif. The other semifinal features second-seed BYU against third-seed Cal State Northridge.
MPSF Freshman of the Year
Jonas Umlauft led the way with a match-high 36 kills, just one shy of his career-high. Umlauft took 71 swings in the match, nearly double UH's second highest attacker, and added six digs and four blocks. Outside hitter
Joshua Walker and middle blocker
Steven Grgas added 12 kills each while middle blocker
Matthew Rawson had 11 kills with no errors in 18 attempts.
Setter
Nejc Zemljak was deadly at the service line with four aces, including match winner which tickled the twine and fell over ending the 3 hour, 4 minute marathon.
“It was proven again that this is a great league and if you're not on top of your game every night you get punished for it," Zemljak said. "We were lucky that we were focused and we got back so we need to enjoy the moment right now, but then we have to get ready for our next game.”
J.D. Schleppenbach led Pepperdine (16-10) with 20 kills while Rodnei Santos added 16 kills.
In Set 1, the Warriors rallied from a 13-9 deficit and later from a three-point Pepperdine scoring run with a four-point run of their own to close to within 19-18. The Waves put together another three point run, capped by a Tyler Jaynes ace for a 26-21 lead and closed out the game with a 30-24 victory.
The Warriors and Waves battled it out for the first part of Set 2 before UH opened a 20-13 lead with seven straight points fueled by consecutive aces by Walker and back-to-back double-blocks by Rawson and Umlauft. The Waves inched their way back closing to within 21-19 but an ace by Zemljak and kill by Umlauft put UH on top 28-22.
Scoring in the third set was back and forth, with neither team leading by more than three points. However, the Warriors answered with a six-point scoring run to jump ahead 24-20. After the Waves closed to within 28-26, Zemljak's kill off a broken play gave the Warriors set point and his ace gave them the set.
The Waves led 15-12 at the midway point of Set 4. Four straight points on consecutive kills by Schleppenbach and back-to-back Warrior hitting errors put Pepperdine ahead 19-13. The Waves extended their lead to as much as 28-18 en route to a 30-22 win.
In the deciding fifth set, the Waves jumped out to a 5-3 lead and again 9-6 forcing head coach
Charlie Wade to use his second timeout. The Warriors tied it at 9 with Zemljak at the service line. The teams traded side outs until Umlauft's hitting error gave the Waves a 12-10 lead. Moments later,
Steven Hunt's solo block on Santos tied the score at 13. At 14-13 Pepperdine, Umlauft erased match point and his kill off a broken play, gave UH match point at 15-14. The Warriors blew two match points on a pair of service errors but the third time was the charm as Zemljak's fourth ace of the match sent off a wild celebration.
“I tried to make it the same as any other serve," Zemljak said. "We've been working on our serving a lot. If you trust in yourself…the one earlier went into the net and the next one went over.”
Entering the match, the Warriors and Waves had split the season series in Malibu, Calif. Pepperdine saw its six-match win streak in the series at the Stan Sheriff Center snapped.
-UH-
