The No. 3 University of Hawai‘i men’s volleyball team held off No. 7 Pepperdine in a dramatic four-set victory Friday night at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center, earning a split in the two-match nonconference series. Set scores were 25-22, 21-25, 25-15, 36-34.
The match was decided in a marathon fourth set that featured numerous momentum swings and several chances for both teams. Pepperdine had five opportunities to extend the match to a fifth set, while Hawai‘i served for the win eight times before finally closing it out when setter Tread Rosenthal finished the match with a kill.
Late in the decisive fourth set with the score tied at 27, Adrien Roure stepped to the service line.
Despite Pepperdine’s 2-1 set lead, the University of Hawai‘i had been battling back, matching every Wave point with one of their own as the set pushed past the 25-point limit.
Roure tossed the ball and fired a missile to the opponent’s side, finding the back corner of the floor for an ace.
All 5,313 fans inside the Stan Sheriff Center erupted, celebrating Roure’s go-ahead ace that gave Hawai‘i a 28-27 lead in the fourth set and hope of forcing a deciding fifth.
With two outs in the bottom of the second, junior shortstop Elijah Ickes dug into the batter’s box, locked in and ready for the pitch.
The night prior, Ickes and the Hawai'i Rainbow Warriors baseball managed just two hits in a 1-0 loss to the Ball State Cardinals baseball, the lone blemish in a four-game set.
Ickes worked the count to 3-1, patiently waiting for something he could drive.
Then, he got it. a fastball down the middle. Ickes didn’t miss, launching it to left field for his first home run of the 2026 season.
The University of Hawai‘i women’s basketball team closed out its home schedule with a 67-49 win over Cal State Fullerton on Senior Night at Bankoh Arena.
1. Home Sweet Home – January 16th seemed so long ago. Prior to the BYU series added on February 6th after the NIL Tournament was officially cancelled on January 27th, it would have been 47 days since the last Hawai`i home match. In between, UH had: multiple flight cancelations getting to Chicago’s O’Hare airport, an unexpected overnight stay in Chicago, seen multiple inches of snow in Pennsylvania, a team vehicle broken into while having dinner at Stanford and a couple of bye weeks. Lots of credit goes to first-year UH Assistant Coach Donan Cruz as he was the one to scour through opposing schedules to see which team(s) had an open week and eventually reached out to BYU’s Head Coach Shawn Olmstead.
The Rainbow Warriors reached the 20-win mark Thursday night with a 77–73 road victory over UC Davis, holding off a late rally to remain tied atop the Big West standings. The win marked UH’s first victory in Davis in six tries and kept Hawaiʻi (20–7, 12–5) level with UC Irvine with three regular-season games remaining.
