HILO, Hawai`i—The motivation factors were many tonight for the UH Hilo volleyball Vulcans, and they might have used them all during an impressive 25-17, 25-21, 25-14 win over visiting Concordia on Thursday night.
The Vulcans, looking for their first home victory of the season, made that happen in front of 691 appreciative fans at Vulcan Gymnasium. They also kept pace in a tight Pacific West Conference race, and they defeated their former coach Gene Krieger, who was on the Concordia sideline as the associate coach.
With the victory, the Vulcans won their sixth straight match and improved to 11-5 on the year and to 6-2 in the Pacific West Conference. Concordia dropped to 9-6 overall and to 3-4 in the PacWest.
"That was our most complete match of the season, without a doubt," said UHH head coach
Chris Leonard. "It was our most consistent and cleanest effort. When we clean up all areas, we can compete with anyone in the country."
Concordia would probably not offer up an argument, at least not tonight.
The Vulcans trailed only once the entire match—and that was after the first point. After that, the evening belonged to the Vulcans from many different angles.
After the dropping the first point of the night, the Vulcans answered with six straight points to take an 8-2 lead. They would roll to the 25-17 first set win, with
Bria Beale putting down three of the final four balls in the set.
In the second set, it was
Amber Tai's turn. The junior outside hitter had five kills in UHH's first eight points, staking the Vulcans to an 8-2 lead. The Eagles would later rally back with their best play of the night and eventually tie the set at 19-19. But the Vulcans would quickly answer, scoring off swings from Beale,
Armani Moultrie and
Alexandria Parisian and would end up taking the set, 25-21.
In the third set, the home team slowly pulled away, hitting at a sizzling .680 clip. A Beale kill made it 21-11, and back-to-back kills from Parisian finished off the night in front of a standing and clapping crowd.
"We served well and we passed well tonight," a happy Leonard added. "It was an excellent execution of a game plan. We have a variety of ways that we can score and we used a lot them tonight."
Beale led the Vulcans with 14 kills and she also had 17 digs. Tai had 13 kills and hit .400. Parisian finished strong in sets two and three to tally 10 kills. In the middle,
Emily Wade and Moultrie were forces, each with five kills.
Kaila Lizama contributed seven digs per set (21 total).
UH Hilo hit .301 on the night.
The Vulcans will continue their seven-match homestand on Saturday, hosting Biola. Start time is 7 p.m. The Eagles defeated Hawaii Pacific tonight (3-1), allowing the Vulcans to move into a tie with the Sharks in the PacWest standings.
