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
Everyone still alive out there? The stakes were very high this morning for the now infamous false alarm on the ballistic missile threat to Hawaii. Well, that kind of puts tonight’s Big West matchup with UC Santa Barbara in a bit of a different light. The stakes are high in the Big West, but, well, you know what I mean. It’s Star Wars night, the longest-running theme night UH has. UH (11-5, 2-1 Big West) is coming off its two […]
A collection of 3-point-popping guys clad in green descend on the Stan Sheriff Center tonight. I’m not talking about Hawaii. Cal Poly, the most attuned team to the 3-ball in the Big West, is the visitor tonight for the first game in a four-game homestand. The Mustangs shoot 37 percent from long distance as a team, and have attempted 400 this season (compared to 308 for UH). UH (10-5, 1-1 Big West) has won the last five over the Mustangs […]
Hawaii has dropped five straight games on the mainland going back to last season. Fortunately for the Rainbow Warriors, playing at the Matadome of Cal State Northridge has worked as a cure-all for road ailments the last three years. They last lost at the 1,600-seat crackerbox gym in 2014. UH (9-5, 0-1 BWC) and CSUN (3-11, 0-0) meet at 5 p.m. HST in an ESPN3-broadcast game. The Rainbow Warriors are 7.5-point favorites coming off their eight-point loss at Long Beach […]
Is this the breakthrough year for Hawaii at Long Beach State? With UH (9-4, 0-1 away) tabbed a slight favorite today (1.5 points), perhaps it could be. LBSU (6-10, 3-2 home) was remade significantly from last season, when it went 2-1 against UH (including back-to-back wins in the regular-season finale and the BWC tournament first round). The guard trio of Justin Bibbins, Evan Payne and Noah Blackwell is gone. But the bruising beach frontcourt should come across as very familiar. […]
Happy New Year, all. The Hawaii basketball team closed 2017 on a strong note, besting Howard by 25 points. It was about as much of a feel-good UH could have asked for, with scoring from multiple sources — most notably a Jack Purchase breakout game — and the kind of overall shooting effort that has been rare this season. But you can always resolve to do better. In that spirit, here are a few things the Rainbow Warriors can aspire to in […]
Last time Howard of the MEAC graced the Stan Sheriff Center, Hawaii laid down a 35-point beatdown on the Bison, thanks to an Aaron Valdes triple-double and a 31-point effort by Roderick Bobbitt. Don’t expect it to be quite as lopsided this time around. Howard has two dynamite scorers, R.J. Cole and Charles Williams, who combine for exactly 40 points per game. Last time around, it was guard James Daniel III, who averaged 29, but he’s now a graduate transfer […]
The Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic has a way of revealing a team’s shortcomings over a four-day period of the holidays. A Christmas crucible, if you will. Consider the Rainbow Warriors’ second-half woes exposed. UH finished sixth place (1-2) in its signature eight-team event, with ill-timed lapses after intermission the deciding factor in losses to then-No. 6 Miami in the first round, then Princeton in the fifth-place game on Christmas Day. UH was tied at the half in both games. […]
It’s Stephen Curry’s 3-point-happy alma mater against the steady, inside-out attack of Hawaii in tonight’s nightcap and Diamond Head Classic consolation semifinal at the Stan Sheriff Center. The Davidson Wildcats (4-5) hit a ridiculous number of triples — 26 — in their season opener against Charleston Southern. They’re also elite when it comes to swinging the ball, at roughly a 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio as a team. Davidson of the Atlantic 10 hits better than 10 3s a game. UH’s season high was […]