Showtime
The Hawaii women’s basketball team raised the bar in the Big West tournament on Wednesday. Can the UH men do the same?
We’re a handful of minutes away from tipoff between the No. 4 Rainbow Warriors and No. 5 Cal State Northridge at the Honda Center in Anaheim. UC Irvine is in the process of banishing UC Riverside in the 1-8 game.
Irvine has the best fan showing thus far, with a couple thousand in house. I’m hearing the UH crowd will be a little better than last year’s respectable showing of a few hundred; we’ll see how that bears out.
UH’s body language was poor throughout its first-round loss to the Anteaters in last year’s quarterfinal; the team had lost back-to-back games going in and the all-conference awards (Christian Standhardinger first-team, Vander Joaquim honorable mention) exacerbated some existing divisions within the team.
The Rainbows’ chemistry has remained solid all season thus far and getting Standhardinger and Isaac Fotu on the first team together should only help matters.
This should be an exciting, fast-paced contest between the two highest-scoring teams in the conference. Should UH prevail and reach a conference semifinal for the first time since the 2012 WAC semis, you’d have to like UH chances of another victory against Long Beach State; though the 49ers swept the regular-season games, they by no means looked like a superior team.
Every preseason suicide sprint, every inbounding drill, every chew-out by coaches all comes down to a 40-minute season. Now we all find out if UH has what it takes to be a true contender in the Big West.
Brian….
read your season ending comment(possibly if no CIT participation), you were there in Anaheim, UH could have lost the game by 17-18 pts, they came back, something like a 29-30 pt swing, turnaround. I agree. sure, a call here, a timeout there, a decision or not, This team they are Warriors! Great heart, as much heart as the Fab Five, Henderson teams, AC teams, Savo teams, and now Gib’ Gems, great competitors to the End!
Tonight we might have kick-started Reggie Theus’ and CSUN’s elevation iF they can keep Rising…
The Way we kick-started UC-Irvine’s last year…
Ideally, and No Real Reason Why Not:
2014-2015 is The Money Season of The Rainbow Warriors…
Devastated is an understatement. We should have won that game. Players had heart and soul. Gib did not use good game strategy in the second half once we had a 13 pt lead. He lost the game for us.
Jman you hit the nail right on the spot! Time for a new coach, BJ. Have the Punahou Mafia buy Gib’s contract out as they’re the reason for this clown losing to CSUN. Seems like the Buff and Blue alums are screwing things up lately. Send this joker packing along with his buddy Barack!
To foul the CSNU player and put him at the free-throw line with 13 secs left, when we were up by 3 is a questionable decision… Bobby Curran & Jeff Portnoy both agreed that was a good decision, but why let them score without the clock running? Basically, we weren’t confident in our 3-pt defense.
CIT?!?! I think it’s time to call it a season, and start getting ready for next year.
Bobby Jeff drank too mAny beers before the game. We squanderd a 13 pt lead by changing the offense. Poor game coaching Portnoy. And Curran. On e again we lose in the first round !!
It was a fix game. Bad ref, the BWC should look in to this guys that call the games.
shamburger’s missed free throw would’ve made it a four point game, instead of only 3. two possession versus one.
if up by four, no foul.
did we really want to get into a free throw shooting contest against the #1 free throw shooting team in college bb?