COLUMBUS, Ohio >> The second-seeded Hawaii men’s volleyball team ended practice at a recreation gym on the campus of Ohio State on Tuesday singing a happy birthday song to Kristian Titriyski.
The freshman opposite hitter, who was named a second-team AVCA All-American on Monday, has missed the past six matches with an ankle injury suffered more than a month ago against Cal State Northridge.
He practiced with the team and should be available for Thursday’s NCAA Tournament quarterfinal against Penn State at 7:30 a.m. Whether or not he will play remains unclear.
“This is the healthiest we have been in quite a while,” Hawaii coach Charlie Wade noted during practice.
For much of the season, Wade has relied on three or as many as four freshmen in the starting lineup at any given time.
The names of those freshmen have changed, but the quality and quantity of this incoming group of players this year is what gave this team hope it could get back to the NCAA Tournament.
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The expectation for UH men’s volleyball, which won back-to-back national championships in 2021 and ’22 and reached four straight NCAA finals until last season, is to compete to win it all every year.
Sophomore setter Tread Rosenthal, who along with freshman outside hitter Adrien Roure was named to the All-America first team, went through the disappointment of failing to make it to the postseason a year ago.
As much as anyone on a team, he is responsible for how quickly this new core group of players, nine of whom are newcomers and another six are second-year players, have come together so quickly and so efficiently.
That quick growth has allowed UH to win the Big West Conference after getting picked third in the preseason, and put itself in position to be one of the favorites to walk out of Ohio on Monday with a national championship trophy in hand.
“I think the biggest thing for us is just how well, honestly, all of our personalities mesh,” Rosenthal said. “I think from day one, we have gotten into the gym and it has been fun from the start. It’s really easy to get together and be able to talk through the hard things in sports if you’re really close and really friendly.”
Rosenthal points to his relationship with Titriyski, a menacing 6-foot-8 presence from Sofia, Bulgaria, who can run hot on the court, as a testament to the closeness of the team.
Rosenthal admits learning how to set his punishing opposite hitter on the right side has been tough and it has led to a few heated conversations that have never gotten out of hand.
“We just have a good relationship where we can work through it and he can tell me I was playing bad, and I can tell him he’s playing bad,” Rosenthal said. “We just kind of kept getting better and better, and I think those relationships, through hardship and working through the hard things through our season, has really bonded us together and made us mesh well.”
Rosenthal said he’s never been on a team that gets as chippy with each other in practices as this one.
The singular goal is all about pushing each other to get better.
“In the end, it’s just all volleyball, we’re all brothers, and we’re all working toward the same thing,” Rosenthal said. “Some guys get mad, some guys just like to troll people to get them mad, some people are just quiet in the background, and it somehow just all works out.”
Middle blocker Kurt Nusterer, who the week of senior night announced he would not return to the team next season, was one of the few players on the team now who was there two years ago when UH reached a national final.
Neither he nor senior libero ‘Eleu Choy, who both earned honorable mention All-America honors, saw the court in the final against UCLA.
That’s changed this season, as both are big reasons why UH has made the rebuilding period go by so quickly.
“It will mean a whole lot more to us if we can win one where we’re actually on the floor,” Nusterer said. “You have seven guys on the court who haven’t won anything, and I think we have not accomplished anything yet and we understand that. We haven’t earned anything ourselves, and we feel like we have benefited from the success of others, but we haven’t accomplished anything meaningful to the guys on the roster currently and you can totally see it. You can never count us out of a game.”
All eight teams today will practice for the first time inside the Covelli Center, where the entire tournament will be held.
All quarterfinal and semifinal matches will be broadcast on ESPN+, with the final on Monday televised on ESPN2.
NCAA Men’s Volleyball Championship
At Covelli Center, Columbus, Ohio
Quarterfinals
Thursday
>> No. 3 UCLA (20-6) vs. No. 6 Belmont Abbey (17-8), 5 a.m.
>> No. 2 Hawaii (26-5) vs. No. 7 Penn State (15-15), 7:30 a.m.
>> No. 1 Long Beach St. (27-3) vs. No. 8 Fort Valley State (16-9), 11 a.m.
>> No. 4 Loyola Chicago (25-3) vs. No. 5 Pepperdine (20-9), 1:30 p.m.
>> TV: ESPN+
>> Radio: 1420-AM / 92.7-FM (UH match only)