The Penn State men’s volleyball team nearly pulled off a huge comeback, but instead saw its season and hopes for a national championship come to an end.
After dropping the first two sets, the Nittany Lions rallied to force a fifth set against two-time defending national champion Hawaii. The Rainbow Warriors held on for the 25-20, 25-23, 16-25, 23-25, 15-10 national semifinal victory Thursday night at George Mason’s EagleBank Arena, and will meet UCLA for the NCAA National Collegiate Championship on Saturday.
UCLA will be seeking the program’s 20th national title. Hawaii is chasing its third, having held onto the No. 1 ranking nearly the entire season, except for one week after a home loss to Penn State in early March.
The Nittany Lions had been seeking their third NCAA crown, with the last in 2008, and were riding a nine-match win streak.
“I think we did leave it all out there,” opposite Cal Fisher told the media after the loss. “In any match you can look back at a certain play and say, ‘I made this error,’ or something didn’t go the way we wanted (it) to, but we fought to the very end.”
Penn State did well following its gameplan of having stronger serving and passing. The Lions delivered a dozen aces, compared to the Warriors’ three, and are just the fourth team in a men’s national tournament match to post double figures in aces. The service pressure was hoped to push Hawaii into a predictable offense – but the Warriors still put the ball away.
“We knew who we were, we knew we were going to put them in trouble,” said coach Mark Pavlik, in his 29th season leading the program. “They (Hawaii) did a great job of hitting themselves out of trouble.”
Hawaii’s offense generated a 56-50 margin in kills, and hit .298 compared to Penn State’s .256.
However, the Lions did not have an ace in the final frame, while Hawaii had two, and that helped the Warriors hit an error-free .667 in the fifth. Hawaii jumped to a quick 4-1 lead in the fifth, and had the margin at 8-3 after an ace from Dimitrios Mouchlias, who also had a match-high 25 kills. Penn State never led in the fifth and from that point never cut the margin closer than three points.
“It’s not about how we lost it,” Pavlik said. “It can be about how they won it.”
Chaz Galloway added 11 kills and 12 digs for Hawaii, Guilherme Voss put up six blocks and setter Jakob Thelle, the American Volleyball Coaches Association National Player of the Year, gave out 42 assists.
In their final matches in blue and white, Brett Wildman racked up 15 kills on .353 hitting with seven aces, an NCAA semifinal record. Fisher followed with 14 kills, two aces and four blocks, and two-time EIVA Player of the Year setter Cole Bogner had 42 assists.
“Every so often when you’ve been around as long as I have, you’re very fortunate to maybe get one or two teams where you say, ‘Gee, I hope my son grows up to be like these guys,” said Pavlik, who later noted that none of their losses this year were 3-0.
Sophomore Michal Kowal had 11 kills and eight digs and Ryan Merk picked up nine digs.
Penn State had leads in each of the first two sets but could not hang on. The Lions delivered four aces and built a 15-11 lead, but Hawaii ran off a 12-2 run, including seven straight points, to take control of the frame. Penn State briefly led 17-16 in the second, but Mouchlias was a handful with seven of his kills in the set.
When the team huddled after the second set, they reminded themselves it would not take big changes to turn the match around.
“(It was) probably something along the lines of trusting what got us here,” Wildman said. “We’ve seen the story being down 0-2 before, so I think it was trusting in what we do, giving it our all, playing for the guy next to you more so than anything else.”
The Nittany Lions finally put it all together, delivering five more aces, and rolled through the third. Wildman had three aces during a 6-0 run, after which Hawaii never cut the margin closer than two, and Penn State added two more 4-0 runs to cruise.
The fourth was filled with dramatic swings. The Warriors used a 5-0 run to jump ahead 8-3, but not long after Penn State had a 9-1 burst, capped by a Fisher ace, to surge ahead 14-11. Hawaii later edged ahead 22-21 before the Lions closed with four of the final five points on three Fisher kills and a Mouchlias error.
That leveled the match at two sets apiece and set the stage for the final battle.
“What people saw of this current edition of Penn State men’s volleyball was what this team’s been like all year long – resilient,” Pavlik said. “They believed in who they were. Our DNA was passing and serving, but unfortunately in game five, Hawaii won the pass and serve battle. That’s the way it goes. That’s not something they hang their heads on. The resiliency they showed to come back against an awfully good team to get to game five was fun to watch.”
With nearly half of the starting lineup set to depart – Bogner, Fisher and Wildman all used an extra year of eligibility as graduate students thanks to the extensions granted because of Covid – the Nittany Lions were sad to see their story together end.
“Playing next to these guys, the rest of the team, it’s been such a blast,” Fisher said. “I will definitely remember it forever, and off the court we had some fun too.”
“I didn’t know how it was going to end but I didn’t want it to end,” Pavlik added, starting to choke back tears. “I’ve never been around a team where ‘I love you’ was thrown around so much.”
