From: wang@sparc16.cs.uiuc.edu (Eric Wang)
Subject: Hawaii Invitational update
Reply-To: wang@cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 09:00:30 GMT

The 15th-ranked Illinois women's volleyball team has just pulled off a
monster upset at the Hawaii Invitational tournament, sweeping the #4
host Hawaii Wahine 15-12, 15-8, 15-7 in one of the Illini's most
impressive performances in the last few years.  Hawaii's passing was off
all match long, so Kee Williams was unable to get started in the middle.
The Wahine led in all 3 games, but various Wahine errors, combined with
an amazingly effective (to an Illini fan) Illini offense, enabled
Illinois to take over each time.  Hawaii practically gift-wrapped game 1
for Illinois; after Illinois got to 11, Hawaii served up seven errors
down the stretch, including three *consecutive* service errors with
Illinois at game point.  Hawaii must be kicking themselves for letting
that game get away -- a comeback win might still have cracked Illinois.
Results of the tournament so far:

Thursday Sept 3
    UCLA 3 Illinois 0	(15-7, 15-11, 15-7)
    Hawaii 3 Houston 1	(??)

Friday Sept 4
    UCLA 3 Houston 1	(15-2, 13-15, 15-?, 15-?)
    Illinois 3 Hawaii 0	(15-12, 15-9, 15-7)

Saturday Sept 5
    Illinois vs Houston
    UCLA vs Hawaii

Standings and rankings at the tournament (and overall)

     1.UCLA	2-0  (2-0)
    15.Illinois	1-1  (4-1)
     4.Hawaii	1-1  (1-1)
     *.Houston	0-2    ?

Comments:
    Talk about starting the season off with a bang -- UCLA and Hawaii
opened their seasons at this tournament.  UCLA did warm up the previous
weekend by playing in an all-California tournament, but since all of
those matches were 2 of 3, they don't count toward their NCAA records.
Illinois was able to arrange a morning triple-header on Tuesday Sept 1,
where they swept 3 back-to-back matches against Loyola of Chicago,
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Northern Illinois (with about 10 minutes of
warm-up for the next opponent between each match), starting at 8 AM and
finishing in time to catch an afternoon flight out to Hawaii.

    In the tournament opener last night, Illinois played the best match
it's put together in years, hitting about .330 against UCLA.  But UCLA
hit about .430, and cruised to a relatively easy win.  Judging from this
match, UCLA is every bit as good as all the pre-season hype predicted;
they just don't break down.  The most graphic demonstration of UCLA's
team unity came late in game 3 when Kirsten Gleis, a junior transfer to
Illinois from the Dutch National Team, had her hard spike attempt
stuff-blocked into her own head and right back over the net.  That
play *always* goes down for a kill :-), yet UCLA passed, set, killed,
yawned.  But we (Illinois) did win a moral victory of sorts by forcing
UCLA to call a time-out in Game 2.  (UCLA lost 5 matches last year, so
we know they're not invincible.  But Illinois was picked by the Big Ten
coaches as the team to beat this year, and played a very good match, and
UCLA still basically ate us for a light evening snack.)  Afterwards,
Hawaii, playing its first match of the year, struggled to defeat
Houston.  Houston is somewhere in the top 25, which makes this a really
strong field for an inaugural tournament.

    Earlier tonight, Houston bushwacked UCLA.  UCLA rolled so easily in
Game 1 (15-2) that Andy Banachowski played his 2nd and 3rd stringers in
Game 2, and Houston scored four straight points at the end to sneak out
a 15-13 win.  Kind of scary to think that UCLA's substitutes are almost
a top-25 team.  Illinois then proceeded to shock the Wahine, Dave Shoji,
thousands of loyal fans, and probably even Mike Hebert and the rest of
Illinois' own coaching staff, by sweeping Hawaii.  We expected to do
well, we believed we could win, we knew that this was the best
opportunity to beat Hawaii that Illinois has ever had, but I'm sure none
of us expected to overpower Hawaii by such a substantial margin.  You
gotta be an Illini to understand what Hawaii means to us -- Illinois
started out in the cellar of the Big Ten back in the early 80's, erupted
in the mid-80's under Mike Hebert, and made it to two straight Final
Fours, in '86 and '87.  Both times, it was Hawaii that denied us a
chance to play for the championship.  Ever since then, Hawaii has seemed
to us to be like a hardwood ceiling over our heads, knocking us back
down just when it seems like we're ready to take the next big step up.
So this win means more to us than just another big upset -- we've
finally gotten "the Hawaii thing" off of our backs.

    Overall impressions so far: UCLA looks like a three-peat team.
Illinois looks ready to fly.  This should be a fun year.

Eric Wang
wang@cs.uiuc.edu