Hawaii Warrior World

Formerly about Rainbow Warriors basketball, but now covering all University of Hawaii sports.

About the blog host

Brian McInnis has covered sports on Oahu full time since 2007, when he joined the Honolulu Star-Bulletin staff as a general reporter. He was the UH basketball beat writer from the 2008-09 season through 2017-18. Follow him on twitter @Brian_McInnis

Latest news

Summer League finals set

By Brian McInnis on August 3, 2012

After two games on opposite ends of the drama scale — a blowout and a nail-biter — on Thursday night in Manoa, the finals of the College Summer League are set. Top-seeded Flipbooks Hawaii meets No. 2 Solar Universe in a winner-take-all championship showdown at 7 p.m. on Saturday at the Manoa Valley District Park gym. It was a worthy atmosphere for playoff games; the gym’s seating area was at capacity and surplus fans rimmed the court. You can visit […]

Playoff Intensity

By Brian McInnis on August 1, 2012

Now that’s more like it. The first round of Tuesday’s College Summer League playoffs offered two of the more exciting games all season at the Manoa District Park gym. “It’s playoffs. Even in the Manoa league it gets intense,” UH senior Hauns Brereton said after dropping 43 points for Central Medical Clinic. Sixth-seeded CMC stunned No. 3 Grantco Pacific 105-104 with a Hail Mary play in the first quarterfinal. Then No. 4 National Fire Protection beat No. 5 Wealth Strategy […]

The Commit That Wasn't … Yet // Fotu vs. Standhardinger

By Brian McInnis on July 30, 2012

By now most of you have probably heard about Aaron Valdes, the La Jolla Prep guard/wing who supposedly committed to play for UH starting with the upcoming season. Word of this spread when two of the more prolific college hoops recruiting twitterers, Josh Gershon of scout.com and Alex Kline of The Recruit Scoop, both tweeted about the commitment almost simultaneously on Sunday afternoon. Valdes confirmed to the Star-Advertiser he intends to commit to UH … but after more digging, it […]

The 'Roop Appears

By Brian McInnis on July 26, 2012

It’s been a long time coming, but Manroop Clair finally made his College Summer League debut on Thursday night for league leader Flipbooks Hawaii. It probably wasn’t the introduction to his long-range skills any UH fan had in mind in the 128-93 blowout of Central Medical … but at least the UH freshman guard got on the court. Some. Clair, by my count, went 1-for-7 for three points (a lone swished 3) in about 9 minutes of total play time. […]

Summer League Tuesday Lite

By Brian McInnis on July 25, 2012

I’ll say up front I wasn’t able to get to the Manoa District Park gym until the second half of the second College Summer League game tonight, so my observations were limited. The first game was an absolute shootout, won 131-129 by Central Medical Clinic over Solar Universe. However, CMC had only two or three players at the start of the game and had to borrow a few from Solar … which ended up costing Artie Wilson’s team a win. […]

Iron Men of Summer League

By Brian McInnis on July 21, 2012

It was surely coincidence. And it’s definitely happened before, here or there. But having back-to-back games at the College Summer League played with one team suiting up just five guys … well, it was at once unfortunate and remarkable. Particularly in the first game, when Grantco Pacific played without two of its best players — Julian Sensley and Geremy Robinson — and still beat Solar Universe 111-101. “Bit of a surprise,” quipped freshman UH guard Michael Harper after he hit […]

Solar Eclipse

By Brian McInnis on July 20, 2012

It was heading for an underwhelming night of College Summer League action at the Manoa District Park gym on Thursday night. The first game, Flipbooks Hawaii’s 101-94 defeat of Wealth Strategy, was ragged the entire way and would have drawn boos from a harsher crowd. The second contest was a 124-78 blowout of National Fire Protection by Solar Universe that was decided about 10 minutes into the game. Solar was unstoppable on this night. Dyrbe Enos (14 points) came off […]

Fotu, Spearman step up

By Brian McInnis on July 14, 2012

After resting his shoulder and playing light minutes in National Fire Protection’s previous College Summer League game in Manoa, Hawaii freshman forward Isaac Fotu came back with a vengeance on Saturday night. Fotu went right at fellow frosh Caleb Dressler of Grantco Pacific, spinning around him several times to score inside on his way to a game-high 26 points. With Julian Sensley out of the lineup for Grantco, there was no interior answer at the other end and NFP (3-3) won […]

Court Sense