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HONOLULU – The two-time defending national champion University of Hawai‘i men’s volleyball team will play a 28-match regular season schedule in 2023 that includes four teams that participated in last year’s NCAA Championship tournament.
The Rainbow Warriors will play 19 homes matches at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center, opening with Ball State, Jan. 12-13 in a rematch of last year’s national semifinals. UH rallied past the Cardinals in five sets to advance to the title match against Long Beach State, whom the Warriors will host March 17-18 to open Big West play.
In addition, national semifinalist UCLA will headline the 27th Outrigger Resorts Invitational, which returns for the first time since 2020. Also making up the field is longtime Outrigger participant Penn State, who will be making its 22nd appearance in the tournament along with Purdue Fort Wayne. The three-day tournament runs March 9-11.
Other non-conference teams making the trip to Mānoa are Saint Francis (Jan. 18 & 20), Concordia-Irvine (Feb. 16-17), Long Island (Feb. 22 & 24), and 2022 NCAA participant Pepperdine (March 1-3), the latter of whom fell to UCLA in an opening round match of the NCAA Tournament.
Hawai‘i will also make two non-conference road trips – one to the state of North Carolina for single matches against Queens (Jan. 25), Belmont Abbey (Jan. 26), and Barton (Jan. 28) and another to former Mountain Pacific Sports Federation rival Stanford (Feb. 10-11) in northern California.
After the LBSU series, UH will spend the next two weeks on the road at CSUN (March 24-25) and at UC Santa Barbara (March 31-April 1) before returning to host UC Irvine (April 7-8) and UC San Diego (April 14-15) in the final two weeks of the regular season.
UH will look to repeat as Big West tournament champions. This year’s event will be held in Irvine, Calif., April 20-22 while the NCAA Championship is scheduled for the first week of May in Fairfax, Va. UH will try to become the first team to three-peat as NCAA champions since UCLA won four straight from 1981-84.
Season tickets for the 2023 season will go on sale next month.
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