2025 NCAA Men’s Volleyball National Semifinals: UCLA Faces Hawai’i for a Chance to Three-peat

Can the Bruins three-peat?

May 10, 2025

#3 seed UCLA men’s volleyball team take on #2 seed Hawai’i in today’s second national semifinal match.

This evening, the two-time defending champion UCLA Bruins men’s volleyball team will face the #2 seed Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors in the second national semifinal match of the NCAA Men’s Volleyball Tournament at 5 pm PT.

The winner of this match will face the winner of Long Beach State vs. Pepperdine in the first semifinal match. UCLA lost both matches in their home-and-home series with Long Beach State this season while they swept Pepperdine in their home-and-home series, only to lose to the Waves in MPSF Tournament semifinals.

Last Time Out

The Bruins opened play in the NCAA Men’s Volleyball Tournament on Thursday when UCLA swept Belmont Abbey, 3-0.

Belmont Abbey is a small Catholic liberal arts college located in Belmont, North Carolina with about 1,700 students. They compete in Conference Carolinas.

The bottom line from Thursday’s match is that UCLA dominated the match. The Bruins never trailed in the first set, winning it 25-18. In the second set, they only trailed at 1-0. Cameron Thorne scored the next two points to put UCLA ahead for good in that set and the Bruins went on to win the set 25-21.

The third set was more competitive. UCLA didn’t take their first lead of the set until Belmont Abbey’s Zach Puentes committed an attack error which made it 17-16, Bruins. From that point forward, the Crusaders were unable to tie the set back up and UCLA cruised to a 25-19 win to clinch the match.

Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors

The Rainbow Warriors advanced to today’s match by defeating Penn State, 3-1, on Thursday. After finishing second in the Big West Conference regular season standings, Hawai’i won the conference tournament by defeating regular season champion Long Beach State.

The Rainbow Warriors did not play UCLA at all this season. In fact, the teams have not met since the 2018 season when they split a pair of matches in Honolulu. So, these two teams are not familiar foes.

Overall, I would expect that UCLA should come out ahead in this match for one simple reason: location. The tournament is being hosted by Ohio State in Columbus, meaning that the Rainbow Warriors had to travel more than twice as far as the Bruins needed to. Of course, the start time for today’s match could have been an issue, but I’m less concerned about that. The fact is that Hawai’i does benefit from the fact that the match starts at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT because that means it starts at 2 pm Hawai’i time. So, the big disadvantage for the Rainbow Warriors is the extra required travel to get to Columbus.

This is your UCLA vs. Hawai’i NCAA Men’s Volleyball Tournament National Semifinals game thread.