Sports
The Big West Owns Top Two Spots in 2025 National Collegiate Volleyball Championship Bracket
The Big West will embark on the quest for the title owning the top two lines in the 2025 National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship. The Big West victor Hawai’i occupies the No. 2 position with regular-season champion Long Beach State claiming the No. 1 seed in the bracket with games slated at the Covelli Center in […]
After a big win over the Beach last night, the Rainbow Warriors are soaring into their 10th national postseason after a year away from the field. UH enters with an overall record of 26-5 on the season and awaits the winner of the play-in game for the No. 7 seed. The ’Bows will take on either Daemen or Penn State on Thursday, May 8 at 10:30 a.m. PT/7:30 a.m. HT. The opening round matchup will take place this Friday, May 2 as the NEC champion Wildcats (15-12) go against the winners of the EIVA in the Nittany Lions (14-15).
Should UH advance in the bracket, the semifinal opponent will be the victor between defending champion and No. 3 seed UCLA and Belmont Abbey. The Rainbow Warriors saw Belmont Abbey back on Feb. 20 in a 3-0 road sweep. The last time UH met up with UCLA was back in 2023, a 3-1 win in the regular season followed by a loss in the championship match in Fairfax, Va.
Top-seeded Long Beach State earned an at-large bid into the field after a stellar 2025 campaign with just three blemishes on the record. The Beach (27-5) opens up their quest for the title against eighth-seeded Fort Valley State (16-9) as the back-to-back SIAC champions. The two teams saw each other earlier this season back on Jan. 31 as the Beach swept through The quarterfinal match is set for May 8 at 2 p.m. PT.
LBSU’s semifinal foe will be the winner of the No. 4/5 matchup between Loyola Chicago and Pepperdine. The Beach holds a 7-0 all-time series record over Loyola with the last meeting going five in Walter Pyramid back on Feb. 5, 2023. The last clash with the Waves came on Jan. 26 in Malibu, Calif., a 3-2 win for the Beach.
The Big West has been a mainstay on the national stage since sport-sponsorship and 2025 is sure to be no exception. The league has combined for four national titles with both Long Beach State (2018, ’19) and Hawai’i (2021, ’22) going back-to-back for the crown. Two of those iterations were between the Beach and the ’Bows, one of the fiercest men’s volleyball rivalries around. At least one league team has been a national finalist in each of the last six seasons.
UH won its first national title in 2021 at the Covelli Center, defeating BYU in straight sets with the 2022 title defense captured in Los Angeles against LBSU. The Warriors return to the national tournament after making four consecutive title match appearances from 2019-23.
For Long Beach State, the championship victories came in consecutive seasons as well with one coming in an all Big West finale in 2019 as the Beach played host. All told, LBSU has been on the national postseason stage 15 times, with six appearances and two titles in The Big West era (2018, ’19, ’22, ’23, ’24) and another championship hoisting moment back in 1991.