Already trailing by two games, Bria Morgan put down a kill to finally give the University of Hawaii at Hilo a lead and a little momentum to rev up its crowd. A day late and a dollar short, the Vulcans then stubbed their toes.
Morgan promptly chalked up a service error, Patty Snel soon followed suit, and by the time UH-Hilo made its third miscue from beyond the backline in the game, coach Tino Reyes could only shake his head.
He wasn’t alone.
“Even the crowd started groaning,” he said “They felt my pain.”
It’s been that kind of year for the rebuilding Vulcans volleyball team.
Capped by a 25-21, 25-16, 25-21 loss to Azusa Pacific on Monday night, UH-Hilo (4-7, Pacific West Conference, 4-13) failed to win a game during its three-match homestand. It’s lost four straight, all sweeps, and sits ninth in the 14-team PacWest.
The final contest during the home stint followed the same pattern of the first two — and most of the matches before that. Morgan, a freshman from Soquel, Calif., led all hitters by burying 24 kills, but she was far and away the busiest person at the UH-Hilo gym again, taking 60 swings. While Snel finished with eight kills on 29 attempts and a team-high 13 digs, UH-Hilo was again outdone by an opponent with more balance, better efficiency and increased firepower.
And when the Vulcans, who start three freshmen and two sophomores, don’t pass well, Reyes realizes they have little margin for error.
“The teams that we played (on the homestand), they’re just ahead of us,” he said. “They’re a little bit more accomplished than us. More hitters than us. We can alleviate that with some better recruiting on my part. So we’ll see what happens.”
The third-year coach will unveil his next class Nov. 14, but NCAA rules prohibit him from talking about it until then.
For now, UH-Hilo will continue to ride Morgan, work some sets to Snel, the only senior in the rotation, and hope that middle blockers Olivia Lane, Abbey Wade and Cassady Granado can contribute more.
Lane had one of her more productive matches of the season Monday with five kills on 10 attacks.
“We’ve got a little bit better from our middle attack,” Reyes said. “At least it’s coming around.”
Still, it all starts with Morgan.
Reyes could only chuckle when he learned that she leads the conference in kills and points.
“Doesn’t surprise me at all,” he said, “because we set her coming out of the shower.”
Morgan’s also the only player in the league with more than 1,000 attacks (1,067), and she’s taken nearly twice as many as Snel. In fact, no other player in the PacWest has swung more than 850 times.
