STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Trying to find something sweet about volleyball's Sweet 16 has become tougher by the year for the University of Hawai'i.

Surprisingly, the three UH seniors might have been the first to find perspective after Missouri made Friday's NCAA Regional semifinal here their final collegiate match.

Minutes after the 10th-seeded Tigers upset the seventh-seeded Rainbow Wahine, Ashley Watanabe, Victoria Prince and Susie Boogaard were in a state of silent shock. Three hours later, they were upbeat as they contemplated a Hawai'i team without them.

Watanabe said she hoped Hawai'i fans would remember this team by last week's near-flawless win over Texas at Texas, when the 'Bows' potential suddenly seemed real and the intensity was relentless.

"I just hope people are going to keep believing," Watanabe said. "I believe they will be good next year. There are good characters on this team."

On her own, Prince formed a long list of the reasons — mostly players — the 2006 Rainbow Wahine would thrive, emphasizing the contribution of co-captain Cayley Thurlby, a backup to All-American setter Kanoe Kamana'o.

"Cayley is so special," Prince said. "She can set, can hit outside, has serve-receive and digging. Take your choice of all that ability. You need her on your team for support, for spirit, for courage. Everything that you don't have she will give you. She is amazing. She just gives you so much and you have to have that kind of player."

Prince, an All-American herself, took a breath and went on.

"Next year this team is going to be fierce. If they have the courage and believe in themselves, they are going to be unstoppable. That's truly what I believe."

The seniors had moved on from the frustration Missouri had created. UH coach Dave Shoji had not, and will not for quite awhile. He admitted yesterday that he still hasn't let go of last year's five-game Sweet-16 semifinal loss to Wisconsin. Friday's breakdown in the middle of the third game against Missouri will stay with him at least as long.

At that point, Missouri's starters shone in the bright lights. Hawai'i's execution grew sketchy, its passing faded and its array of hitters were all more miss than hit.

"It's frustrating not to be able to win this match and get to the regional final," Shoji said. "It's very frustrating because I thought we had the team to do it. The players did everything they could to win this match and get this far. At this level, it's just a few breaks here and there and we didn't get them, didn't create them."

For that, Shoji blamed himself, calling his players a "reflection of the staff."

"The public can second-guess anything I did, which I expect," Shoji said. "I just hope they understand what the players go through and that really they did all they can do."

He even made the rare admission that the Rainbows' unique travel situation might have sapped his team's strength. He spoke at length about searching in vain for the right flight schedules, then admitted the most draining part might have been so much time spent in hotel rooms waiting for games once his team arrived at one of its 12 destinations this season.

The 'Bows spent all but two of their last 18 days together away from home. Assistant coach Kari Ambrozich had already started proctoring early final exams. When the team went to the final four three years ago in New Orleans, she supervised 30. Tomorrow, Raeceen Woolford will be welcomed home with a bio-chem exam at 7:30 a.m., organic chemistry at 9:30 a.m. and physics at noon.

Hawai'i had flown more than 50,000 miles once this odyssey was over and Shoji said he saw it in the final game Friday.

"I didn't see a spark in anybody's eyes," he recalled. "I didn't see any energy that could get us back after that deficit. They played hard, they just didn't have anything to go to."

Now they do — home. Shoji will miss what this core group brought him the last two years, and what it did not bring.

"It has been very low maintenance, which all coaches love," he said. "They took care of themselves, policed themselves, organized themselves, and everyday they came to practice and played hard."

Even his wife, Mary, was thankful for what the players described warmly as a "sisterhood."

"I can remember time and time again talking about how much he likes the group," Mary Shoji said. "They are just quality people. He didn't have to deal with the drama and excess baggage. They come together and enjoy each other and do what they were brought together to do and take care of business. It had to be easier on him."

It was absolutely easier on the players. They leaned on each other through the fragmented start of the season, when they faced a flurry of top-five teams with a debilitated lineup. They leaned harder as things came together during the dog days of the WAC.

Over the past three weeks, they propped each other up through an eighth straight WAC Championship and the disappointment of getting what amounted to a Hawai'i layover from the NCAA, which sent them straight back to the Mainland to play a Top-10 team in the second round on its home court.

They leaned hardest last night, in the fresh snow and 20-degree temperatures of State College, after a heartbreaking loss.

"The little things you don't see on paper affected the outcome," Watanabe said. "Those are the things the coach can't control. You can't control momentum shifts. Things go a certain way for a reason and it is beyond us."

Boogaard and Prince, who came to Hawai'i from the Mainland, were thinking far beyond Missouri and Penn State when the finality set in. They were overwhelmed by what they found in Hawai'i. That was what they wanted to remember.

"It was such a wonderful team," Boogaard said. "Just the closeness and we were all so into it. Everything has been about the team and the crowd has been with us the whole time. Those two things ... you can't play for more than your team and your crowd."

Apparently something sweet came out of this volleyball season after all.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.