There’s no place like the road.
The second-ranked 91直播 men’s volleyball team will attempt to complete an undefeated regular season away from home with two matches at No. 13 UC San Diego today and Saturday at LionTree Arena in La Jolla, Calif.
91直播 (23-3, 6-0 Big West) can also lock up the No. 1 seed in the Outrigger Big West Men’s Volleyball Championship in two weeks with either two wins over the Tritons (11-1, 2-5) or a win and a loss by second-place Long Beach State, which is currently two matches back with four to play.
The Rainbow Warriors have separated themselves from the rest of the conference due to two road wins at both UC Irvine and Long Beach State for the first time in the same year as a member of the Big West. 91直播 is 9-0 overall this season away from Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center. Six of those wins have come in three sets.
91直播 men’s volleyball coach Charlie Wade is looking more at a record of 10-0. That would mean an undefeated conference season both home and away.
“We’ve put ourselves in a good position to win the league outright,” Wade said Tuesday. “Certainly going 10-0 in the league is something that we’re now close to. Literally it has only happened twice. We did it in 2021 and Long Beach State did it in 2019.”
Neither of those teams won the Big West tournament championship but both ended up winning a national championship.
91直播 defeated the 2019 Beach team, led by AVCA National Player of the Year TJ DeFalco, in five sets inside of the Stan in the BWC final.
Two years later, 91直播 was upset by UC San Diego in the Big West semifinals. 91直播 didn’t drop a set again, winning both matches in the NCAA tournament in three sets to win the first of back-to-back national titles.
“Going 10-0 in league play in this league is significant,” Wade said. “Winning 10 matches against the beat teams, you’ve got to win some significant matches on the road. It’s hard to accomplish for sure.”
91直播’s nine-match road winning streak is the fourth longest in school history.
UH has won the Big West outright only once in the regular season (in ’21) and shared the top spot with Long Beach State in 2023.
If the Tritons are able to pull off an upset this week, the likelihood is it would come tonight.
91直播 has lost five sets in its three conference series openers on a Friday night. The rematch on Saturday has been completely one-sided with UH sweeping all three of its opponents.
“We’ve got guys that have played a lot of volleyball and they are students of the game,” Wade said. “When you’re breaking down the film and looking at film, not only are you watching film of the opponent but you’re seeing them against yourself. Little bits of adjustments tend to have a little more of an impact.”
91直播 has used the same starting lineup in every Big West match with the exception of the second night against UC Santa Barbara, when Ofeck Hazan started in the middle for Trevell Jordan.
Sophomore Kristian Titriyski has been named the Big West Conference Offensive Player of the Week three times in the last month.
In nine matches since returning from nearly a two-month absence, Titriyski is averaging 3.94 kills per set.
He has hit .400 or better in five of those matches after reaching that mark six times all of last season.
“Kristian has played a lot of volleyball at a high level and he played as a young man on a team with adult men (in Bulgaria), so he wasn’t always on the court playing all of the time,” Wade said. “He sees the level of talent we have in our gym and it is ultra competitive. Everybody knows there is a high level of optimism of what we’re doing and what we have to go out there that we can compete each and every night. We’re on a bit of a run here and the goal is to win the national championship and it is going to take everybody.”
