San Diego defeats a fatigued Hawaii team to close out the Wahine Volleyball Classic

Joshua Walker watched a team wearing home dark jerseys on Sunday that he hadn’t seen in the practice gym all camp.

The Rainbow Wahine offered little resistance against a San Diego squad that wrapped up the Hawaiian Airlines Wahine Volleyball Classic with an impressive 25-16, 25-17, 25-18 sweep of Hawaii on Sunday at Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.

Nineteen hours after Hawaii left the floor following a hard-fought five-set loss to nationally ranked Baylor, the Rainbow Wahine returned and looked fatigued for the majority of the match that lasted 1 hour, 44 minutes, before a crowd of 3,479.

“For sure, I haven’t seen that team this year,” Walker said of the Rainbow Wahine. “We just kind of got off to a slow start and were making uncharacteristic mistakes and not executing the things we had talked about in scout, so when those things happen, yeah, maybe it is a bit tired.”

Nemo Beach had a team-high 11 kills and six different Toreros had at least four kills to help San Diego finish the season-opening tournament 2-1.

Cha’lei Reid led Hawaii with 11 kills but no other player had more than four.

Hawaii hit .078 for the match and tallied 26 kills total.

“Honestly, I think we’re all tired, but even before then, there are a lot of girls that worked really, really hard and in fall camp we were going back-to-back (double) days,” said junior libero Victoria Leyva, who led UH with 10 digs. “I don’t think fatigue had anything to do with it. If anything we all just need to hone in on our skills a little bit more on the mental aspect and the volleyball IQ part of it.”

Walker, as he has done all tournament, wasn’t afraid to throw multiple lineups on the floor when things weren’t working well.

He had middles playing the right side, multiple players substituting in and out in front-row and back-row situations and even went with two setters in the third set.

Freshman Manon Baudrillard from Paris, France, who has barely been in Hawaii for a month, had six assists and three digs in her first college appearance.

“I was very nervous. My setting was a little bit not perfect,” said Baudrillard, who is learning to speak English. “(Volleyball is) very different from Europe. The rotation and the positioning is different. The libero serving is really weird, but it’s OK. I like it.”

USD hit .266 for the match and had six aces and nine blocks. UH finished with four blocks and two aces.

An early 9-0 scoring run with Lauren Lynch serving allowed the Toreros to take control of the opening set early.

UH was predictable on offense with Reid taking 10 of the first 12 swings resulting in a 13-3 USD lead.

Ryann Knuth had five kills and ended the opening set with an ace for USD, which hit .333.

The Toreros continued to spread it around on offense and doubled up on Hawaii at 14-7 in the second set on a Beach kill.

USD led by as many as nine and UH finished the set with Baudrillard getting her first playing time as a Rainbow Wahine.

Walker used both setters in the third set and brought in Marne Ursem in the middle.

Hawaii didn’t let the Toreros jump out to an early lead and kept it close until USD rattled off three consecutive points to go up 15-12 at the media timeout.

A block and a kill by Barton pushed the scoring run to five points before Panna Ratkai was able to tool a block for a kill. USD responded with the next seven points to put the match away.

“Hitting percentages were low. We couldn’t get anyone really going consistently, so yeah, we’ve got to see if getting another setter is going to help,” Walker said. “We’ve got to see what other production we can get on the right side of the court as well.”

No. 21 Baylor 3, Georgia Southern 1

The Bears won the tournament title with a 25-22, 25-16, 23-25, 25-21 win over the Eagles powered by Ksenia Rakhmanchik’s match-high 19 kills.

Nadiya Johnson added 12 kills and Victoria Davis added 12 for the Bears (3-0), who hit .303 as a team.

Johnson added four blocks and libero Morgan Madison led all players with 18 digs.

Anna Powell and Sam Bowron each had 10 kills to lead the Eagles (0-3).

SAN DIEGO DEF. HAWAII 25-16, 25-17, 25-18
TOREROS (2-1)
			ATTACK				SET		SERVE		BLOCK			DEF.		REC.
NO.	PLAYER	SP	K	E	TA	PCT.	A	E	SA	SE	BS	BA	BE	D	BHE	RE	PTS
18	Sparks	3	5	1	10	.400	1	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	7.0
1	Beach	3	11	3	30	.267	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	11	0	0	12.5
15	Scholz	3	8	3	17	.294	0	0	0	0	0	5	0	1	0	0	10.5
7	Barton	3	9	6	25	.120	2	0	1	0	0	4	1	10	0	0	12.0
12	Munday	3	2	0	2	1.000	34	0	1	3	0	2	0	2	0	0	4.0
2	Lynch	3	0	0	0	0	3	0	1	1	0	0	0	17	0	1	1.0
8	Knuth	3	6	3	18	.167	0	0	2	1	0	0	0	4	0	1	8.0
13	Brewer	2	4	0	7	.571	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	3	0	0	5.0
5	Lipo	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0.0
4	Bates	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.0
Totals			45	16	109	.266	41	0	6	7	0	18	1	49	0	2	60
RAINBOW WAHINE (1-2)
			ATTACK				SET		SERVE		BLOCK			DEF.		REC.
NO.	PLAYER	SP	K	E	TA	PCT.	A	E	SA	SE	BS	BA	BE	D	BHE	RE	PTS
9	Hakas	3	4	4	15	.000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	3	4.0
2	Leyva	3	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	1	0	0	0	10	0	0	0.0
3	Arquette	3	0	0	1	.000	13	1	1	1	0	1	2	5	0	0	1.5
12	Sylvester	3	2	2	13	.000	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	2	0	0	3.5
10	Reid	3	11	6	32	.156	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	0	2	11.0
11	Cormier	3	3	3	12	.000	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	0	0	3.0
5	Miyasaki	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	3	0	0	1.0
19	Purser	3	2	0	8	.250	1	0	0	2	1	1	0	2	0	0	3.5
22	Ratkai	2	4	3	19	.053	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	4	0	1	4.5
8	Baudrillard	2	0	0	0	0	6	0	0	0	0	0	1	3	1	0	0.0
6	Ursem	1	0	0	3	.000	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.0
Totals			26	18	103	.078	26	1	2	4	1	6	4	38	1	6	32
T—1:44. A—3,479. Officials— Randy Rubonal, Hunter Haliniak, Kevin Chun, Kerwin Stenstrom.
Key — SP: Sets played; K: kills; E: hitting errors; TA: Total attempts; PCT.: Hitting percentage; A: Assist; E: Setting error. SA: Service ace; SE: Service error; BS: Block solos; BA: Block assists; BE: Block errors; D: Digs; BHE: Ball-handling errors; RE: receiving error; PTS: Points (kills plus blocks plus aces).