FAIRFAX, Va. - The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA)  on Wednesday night announced Hawai'i senior setter Jakob Thelle as its 2023 Player of the Year.

The award was presented at a banquet ahead of the 2023 National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship semifinals, being hosted by George Mason University for the first time since 1990. Thelle’s top-ranked two-time defending national champion Rainbow Warriors (28-2) are the No. 2 national seed after the UCLA Bruins, and are set to take on third-ranked Penn State in Thursday’s second national semifinal inside EagleBank Arena at 4:30 p.m. PT/1:30 p.m. HT on NCAA.com.

Thelle gives Hawai’i a fifth AVCA National Player of the Year distinction all-time, following former teammate Rado Parapunov in 2021, Costas Theocharidis in both 2001 and 2003, and Yuval Katz, who shared the 1996 award with UCLA’s Stein Metzger.

Thelle, a fifth-year Warrior, has already in the last couple of weeks earned a second straight Big West Championship Most Valuable Player selection, as well as repeat All-Big West First Team and AVCA All-America First Team honors. The product of Tonsberg, Norway, had previously picked up an All-Big West honorable mention in 2021.

Thelle leads all of the NCAA Division I-II at a career-best 10.73 assists per set. Under the 6-foot-6 setter’s direction, Hawai’i ranks second behind UCLA in team hitting percentage (.373). Thelle has totaled 826 assists and 28 aces while also averaging 1.43 digs per frame. A service ace on match point during a Big West Championship semifinal sweep over UC Santa Barbara gave Thelle 121 career aces, which is tied for the program's all-time standard. Thelle has one double-double this season, that coming in that same match with the Gauchos, which was a fifth collegiate double-double.

Led by Thelle, Hawai’i has been ranked No. 1 nationally in 16 of 17 weeks this season, including unanimously on six occasions. With Thelle as the starter, the Warriors have won back-to-back Big West Championship and National Collegiate Championship titles, and are this year’s Big West regular-season co-champions.

Thelle is The Big West’s third successive AVCA National Player of the Year and fifth in six years since the conference began its sponsorship of men’s volleyball. Long Beach State freshman phenom Alex Nikolov was the choice in 2022. Nikolov then left the Beach early to pursue a professional career. Parapunov in 2021 and T.J. DeFalco (2019) and Josh Tuaniga (2018) of LBSU were the initial trio of honorees.

UH enters Thursday’s match as a winner of 11 straight, while Penn State (27-3) has taken nine in a row. LBSU contests the first semifinal at 2 p.m. PT versus UCLA, also on NCAA.com. That one will serve as a rematch of last year's semifinal thriller in which the Beach posted a reverse sweep at the Bruins’ Pauley Pavilion before falling to Hawai’i. Saturday’s championship tilt is scheduled for a 2 p.m. PT/11 a.m. HT first serve in front of a live national television audience on ESPN2.