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Hawai’i outside attackers Brett Rosenmeier and Colton Cowell were unable to pull off back-to-back upsets and are now out of medal contention at the World University Beach Volleyball Championship.
Rosenmeier and Cowell a day after pulling a first-round upset lost to the Australian pair of Paul Burnett and Maximilian Guehrer 24-14, 21-12 in the second round of the international tournament on Wednesday in Germany.
This was the second consecutive elimination match against a top-10 ranked team for the Hawai’i pair. Rosenmeier and Cowell, which entered the 32-team tournament outside of the top 25 rankings, swept No. 9 Fan Yan Mark Shen and Zi Hao Kingsley Tay of Singapore in the knockout stage’s opening round.
With this second-round loss, Rosenmeier and Cowell move into the consolation bracket but can still finish in the tournament’s top 10 if they win their next two matches.
The Hawai’i players will face Belarus’ Dzmitry Abramenka and Pavel Piatrushka in the ninth-place quarterfinals on Thursday.
Rosenmeier and Cowell transitioned from indoor to beach volleyball for the summer after helping Hawai’i ended the 2018 NCAA season in the top five of the national rankings.
Rosenmeier started 18 matches for the Rainbow Warriors last season and was seventh in the Big West averaging 0.33 aces per game. He also was among the conference leaders with a 2.01 kills per game average, including have 10 kills on a .375 attack percentage in Hawai’i’s conference tournament semifinal victory against UC Irvine.
Cowell primarily came off the beech as a serving specialists and had eight aces last season.