Just what the doctor ordered.
When the UH-Hilo volleyball team is feeling blue and sick of losing, the best medicine is to play Holy Names, the PacWest cellar dweller.
The Vulcans plowed the Hawks 25-18, 25-10, 25-21 on Saturday night at UHH gym, getting healthy in a hurry and shoring up all their previous ills: errant hitting, shaky passing, and their season-long habit of beating themselves.
UHH gave that flu bug to Holy Names, which struggled with errant hitting, shaky passing, and a bad habit of beating themselves.
The Vuls (8-11, 6-8 PacWest) snapped a three-match losing streak and finished 3-5 to conclude an eight-match homestead while the Hawks (1-21, 0-14) might soon develop amnesia, forgetting what a win feels like.
Holy Names’ only victory was against Cal State East Bay on Sept. 9. The Pioneers, also a Division II team, are 12-10. The Hawks also took BYU-Hawaii to five sets before losing.
The visitors showed a bit of fight but only in really small spurts. The majority of the time the Hawks did an excellent job of giving away free points. They had 34 unforced errors (hitting, serving, ball-handling); the Vuls had 20 giveaway points.
Marley Strand-Nicolaisen kept hitting over Hawks’ block, through it, and off it for 17 kills on 52 swings for a .212 hitting clip to lead UHH, which finished with a .189 hitting percentage.
The 5-foot-11 senior finished with nine digs, one short of a double-double.
Haylee Roberts started at the L2 (left-side No. 2 hitter), behind Strand-Nicolaisen, and added six kills (.278) on 18 attacks with just one error, showing her smart shot selection. Kayla Balezentis had four kills and hit .375, and Mina Grant collected 15 digs.
Marin Gibson had seven kills (.115) and Ashly Goor added four kills (.222) for the Hawks, who hit negative .025. Every other Hawk hitter hit negative, and that summed up why the match lasted just 1 hour and 25 minutes.
For the first two sets, the Hawks looked exactly like a last-place team. It wasn’t so much what the Vuls did, but what the visitors couldn’t do.
Holy Names struggled mightily with its serve-receive passing, forcing setter Christina Cobarruvias to scramble all over the court.
Even when the Hawks had a decent set, they couldn’t find the court and found all different ways to commit hitting errors: long, wide, and into the net.
In the first set, Holy Names had a miserable .000 hitting percentage with 11 kills and 11 errors on 46 swings. (Most coaches prefer no more than five hitting errors per set.)
Then the Hawks were somehow worse in Game 2, when they hit negative .162 with only four kills and 10 errors on 37 swings.
For the match, UHH knocked down four kills on Hawk over-passes; the Vuls passed pretty clean and gave away zero easy points on over-passes.
The Hawks made it somewhat exciting in the final game, scoring five straight points, their longest of the night, for a 23-21 lead. They hit .079 in the third set, by far their best production by feeble compared to UHH: .133, .357, and .121, across the board.
Then UHH called its only timeout, and Holy Names served into the net. Balezentis poked over a tip to send the visitors from Oakland, Calif., back to their hotel with lots of time to contemplate their latest shellacking.
UHH’s last home match is against BYU-Hawaii on Nov. 19, and will serve as a senior farewell for Strand-Nicolaisen, Sienna Davis, Kyndra Trevino-Scott, and Mariya Heidenrich.
Before that season finale, the Vuls will take a five-match road trip. If they should drop a few matches, there’s good news: UHH plays at Holy Names on Nov. 11.
