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Outside attacker Hilir Henno along with leading UC Irvine to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in six years has earned one of the top honors in college men’s volleyball.
A nationwide voting committee selected Henno as the 2024 Off the Block National Offensive Player of the Year.
The National Offensive Player of the Year is given to the nation’s best offensive player in NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball during the season.
Henno enters the NCAA Tournament second in the nation with a 4.77 kills game average and has the nation’s best attack percentage among pin-hitters at .382. The Big West Player of the Year has double-digit kills in every match this season and nine matches with at least 20 kills, including a career-high 36 kills against Hawai’i in March.
Along with these performances, Henno is in the nation’s top 15 averaging 0.43 aces per game. Henno also had nine aces in a non-conference win against Princeton to tie the single-match school record for aces, which he set last year.
The Anteaters finished the Big West in second place and earned the final at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. UC Irvine will play Penn State in the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals on Tuesday.
The voting committee for the National Offensive Player of the Year was comprised of college men’s volleyball media members from throughout the nation. This is the inaugural year that Off the Block has presented the National Offensive Player of the Year.
Off the Block is a national award winning website that launched in 2011 and is the nation’s leader in college men’s volleyball coverage.
2024 National Offensive Player of the Year voting results
1. Hilir Henno, UC Irvine – 50 votes
T-2. Geste Bianchi, UC Santa Barbara – 12 votes
T-2. Parker Van Buren, Loyola – 12 votes
4. Merrick McHenry, UCLA – 11 votes
5. Nicolas Slight, Grand Canyon – 8 votes
6. Camden Gianni, Grand Canyon – 7 votes
7. John Kerr, Penn State – 6 votes
8. Jamal Ellis Carballo, Fairleigh Dickinson – 3 votes
T-9. Mark Frazier, Purdue Fort Wayne – 2 votes
T-9. Tinaishe Ndavazocheva, Ball State – 2 votes
T-9. Jacob Pasteur, Ohio State – 2 votes
T-9. Andrew Rowan, UCLA – 2 votes
T-13. Spyros Chakas, Hawai’i – 1 vote
T-13. Nathan Zini, Saint Francis – 1 vote
T-13. Ben Harrington, Princeton – 1 vote