It's less than halfway into the boys volleyball season in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu, but one thing is already clear: Punahou is, once again, the team to beat in the league.

With a 25-11, 25-7 over Iolani Thursday night, the Buffanblu improved to 5-0 and are the lone remaining unbeaten in the six-team ILH Division I. It is Punahou's second sweep in three days since returning from San Diego Sunday. At the Best of the West Tournament, the Buffanblu finished seventh, but coach Rick Tune said the result isn't quite indicative of how well his team played.

"That's kind of deceiving, because we lost in the quarterfinals to a Corona Del Mar team that was real good — we won the first set against them, lost the second then dropped a close third — but the match after that we were able to rest our starters," Tune said. "We played our second team and lost 17-15 in the third against a team that we probably should have beat, so all in all, we lose one match with our starters. It was a good tournament. We definitely have some stuff to work on and we're excited about getting better."

The last part from Tune — "we definitely have some stuff to work on and we're excited about getting better" — that's quite scary.

Tuesday was my first look at Punahou this season. The two-time reigning state champion Buffanblu were playing their rival Kamehameha, the same opponent it beat in the last year's state final and doing it on one day of rest. Punahou picked apart a scrappy Kamehameha team in a 48-minute sweep, 25-19, 25-20. The Buffanblu probably gave away more points on net violations and serving errors than the Warriors earned and still, were never really threatened in the match.

"Playing up here is always tough and then coming off two days of rest before playing this game off a long road trip is tough," Tune said. "This is the first time some of these boys have done something like that so we knew that we were going to have to grind one out and it likely wasn't going to be our finest work, but that's why we got the whole rest of the season in front of us to give us a chance to get better."

Tune and standout Larry Tuileta said all the right things in postgame interviews — praising an overmatched Kamehameha team while picking apart their own — but the fact of the matter was, it never close.

Both teams will surely get better and are likely two of the top four teams in the state. Other state-title contenders look like Big Island Interscholastic Federation-power Kamehameha-Hawaii and Oahu Interscholastic Association front-runner Moanalua.