Hawai'i's aura of volleyball invincibility officially ended last night when Loyola Marymount became the first unranked team to beat the Rainbow Wahine in more than eight years. LMU's 30-26, 26-30, 31-29, 23-30, 15-13 victory took nearly 3 hours, and ended UH's remarkable streak at 205 straight matches.

The ninth-ranked 'Bows (6-6) again failed — and flailed — in their search to find a finishing formula. It was the Lions (11-1), who received votes in this week's Top 25 poll, who roared back after losing the first five points in the final game. They outscored Hawai'i, 8-3, to end the match.

Fittingly, LMU sophomore Heather Hughes got her 29th kill from the back row on match point. The ball hit the top of the net and spun over, far from any of the frustrated Rainbow Wahine. The Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 4,744, shocked and amazed for nearly three hours at its team's Jekyll-and-Hyde performance, finally went silent.

What did Loyola do that Hawai'i could not?

"Nothing," UH senior Ashley Watanabe said, sniffling. "We kick our own 'okoles. We need to be more honest with ourselves."

That was the theme of the post-match meeting, according to Watanabe.

"The coaches put it into a different perspective where the ball is in our court now," she said. "It's up to us how we want it to go the rest of the season. We don't have leaders, and it being our senior year ... we've got to get our act together."

All the years of relentlessly mowing down unranked opponents came to a halt against a team described by its coach as "very young." The Lions have been to the past two NCAA Tournaments, but lost an all-region setter after last season and started three seniors and four underclassmen.

They looked like they had had enough when they hit .058 in Game 4, as even Hughes struggled. She was stuffed for only the second time all night in the midst of Hawai'i's 5-0 run to open the fifth game.

"Dealing with young kids, unfortunately there is too much emotion," LMU coach Steve Stratos said. "They are not experienced enough, haven't gone through this enough. We've got so many babies out there I think they just go overly emotional and wore out."

They were resilient enough to rally. Christianna Reneau, who was hitting zero (11 kills, 11 errors) going into the final game, buried three straight kills to tie it at 10. Hawai'i never led again.

"There were a number of easy plays where we just broke down," UH coach Dave Shoji said, referring to the entire match. "One person doesn't do what they're supposed to do and the ball goes right where we should have had it covered. We're just not able to play volleyball like it's supposed to be played at this point. We've got too many different kinds of volleyball players and there is no rhythm out there."

Shoji had no quarrel with his team's effort. The Rainbow Wahine wore themselves out trying to keep up and used every combination possible from 13 players. But too many dinks dropped and too many players watched each other while balls fell. The Lions won nearly every joust at the net and Hawai'i hit just .197. LMU even won the dig battle, 100-97, despite Watanabe's 31.

"We start looking over our shoulder at the end," Shoji said. "We've done that way too many times, and at 5-0 (in the fifth) we let their weakest hitter get two balls on the floor. That was disappointing. We need to make a conscious effort to not let her have that (dink) shot.

"I think getting mad would be good. We're a little passive. They are just too nice to each other. Someone needs to take charge out there and get people fired up about it."

NOTES

Hawai'i plays Loyola Marymount again tonight. It will be preceded by an alumnae exhibition, beginning at 5 p.m.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.