Gameday: Big West quarterfinals

For the first time since the 2002 WAC, Hawaii enters a conference tournament as the top seed.

That was also the last time the Rainbow Warriors won it all, so that’s some positive mojo to perhaps counteract all the conference No. 1 seeds going down across the country thus far.

Four teams have a realistic shot at winning this thing: No. 1 Hawaii, No. 2 UC Irvine, No. 3 Long Beach State and No. 4 UC Santa Barbara. The drop-off from there is, well, significant.

UH (24-5) is a 10.5-point favorite over eighth-seeded Cal State Fullerton (10-19), which is fortunate just to be in this thing; they wouldn’t be were it not for Cal State Northridge’s academic transgressions.

The Rainbow Warriors’ two regular-season games against the Titans weren’t walks in the park. They were fortunate to win at Titan Gym, and UH didn’t shoot well at home against CSF, sub-40 percent. Fortunately, the Titans were worse.

For UH to succeed — not just today, but through Saturday — the Rainbows’ big guns will have to come out firing and avoid the significant foul trouble that dogged Stefan Jankovic and Roderick Bobbitt in recent games.

In a three-games-in-three-days setting like this, depth comes into play more than your average week during the BWC season.

UH coach Eran Ganot feels good about tossing freshman Sheriff Drammeh out there, basically for the same minutes that used to be occupied by the departed Isaac Fleming.

But there’s no question Fleming, at his best, brought something this team could miss at some point during this tournament: a secondary playmaker and a scoring threat off the bench.

BWC first-teamer Bobbitt probably should’ve been credited with an additional steal in the regular-season finale at Long Beach State, but was officially given just one. So he needs one more to match Tom Henderson for the UH career mark, and two to pass the great.

—————————

Will update here with the other results of the day.

Game 1: UCSB kept up its hot play in the first game of the day. The Gauchos shot lights out and basically ran No. 5 UC Davis out of the building. With under six minutes to play, Santa Barbara leads 69-46. Yikes.

Make it 81-52 with under three to go.

UCSB prevails 87-61, final. 24 points for Michael Bryson, 20 for Gabe Vincent. Siler Schneider and Brynton Lemar with 16 apiece in the loss for UCD.

Game 2: No. 1 Hawaii completely outplays No. 8 Cal State Fullerton in the second half for a 75-44 victory.

You can read about the details here.

Game 3: Luke Nelson scored a career-high 36 points, one off the Big West tournament record, to carry No. 2 UC Irvine to an 84-64 rout of No. 7 Cal Poly.

UCI center Mamadou Ndiaye was ejected for leaving the bench during a minor scrum in the second half, but the Anteaters turned what was a 13-point game into a laugher.