In a statement-making night, the Hawaii basketball team was gritty in pink.

Wearing pink socks in support of breast-cancer awareness, the Rainbow Warriors made UC Davis feel blue in an 80-60 Big West victory in front of a season-high 4,653 in the Stan Sheriff Center.

Three nights earlier, the ’Bows had squandered a 14-point lead in the second half in an overtime loss to UC Irvine. On Saturday night, the ’Bows pledged not to let another advantage vaporize.

“We focused on making sure they wouldn’t come back in the game,” said Sheriff Drammeh, who led the ’Bows with 18 points on 7-for-10 shooting.

Drammeh connected on shots from deep and deeper, finishing 4-for-5 from behind the 3-point arc. He also induced the Aggies into five fouls, absorbing three charges.

“Just floor positioning and discipline,” Drammeh said.

“Talent,” point guard Drew Buggs said of Drammeh’s take-charge skills.

Buggs also found the key-to-baseline pipeline, nourishing post players Zigmars Raimo (14 points) and Dawson Carper (career-high 13).

“That’s our team,” UH coach Eran Ganot said of the share-the-wealth production. “We’ve been saying that from Day One.”

The ’Bows, who improved to 12-7 overall and 3-2 in the Big West, were respectful of the Aggies. Despite falling to 5-14 and 1-4, the Aggies are the defending Big West champions. Their top playmaker is TJ Shorts II, who was named the league’s top newcomer and best player last season.

But Shorts had difficulty creating shooting space and cranking up the Aggies’ transition game. Against a succession of defenders and a cameo 2-3 zone, Shorts was held to 11 points on 3-for-7 shooting. Shorts entered averaging 11.3 shots per game.

The ’Bows scored the first nine points of the second half to take a 49-32 lead. The Aggies eventually whittled the deficit to 62-52. But Buggs scored a layup off a pirouette, and then hit a turnaround jumper from 15 feet. Later, Buggs found Raimo twice off baseline cuts for layups and then fired a pass to Eddie Stansberry, who hit a 3 from the corner to widen the lead to 75-55.

Soon after, Drammeh buried a 3.

“He’s been shooting the ball well in league,” Ganot said of Drammeh. “His rhythm was good. Sometimes he gets really excited and he has to find a balance. But today, he took good 3s. It was out of the offense, the extra pass.”

UCD coach Jim Les praised Drammeh’s energetic leadership.

“Yeah, I thought he was aggressive,” Les said. “I thought he made some shots. He made a couple long ones. And he’s their emotional leader. You can see they feed off his energy. That got everybody else going, and they ramped up their level of intensity.”

Buggs finished with 12 assists and 12 points.

With a 10-point first half, Carper was in the lineup to start the second half.

“It’s not a fluke,” Ganot said of Carper’s ascent. “It’s not something that comes out of nowhere. You earn more time from practicing well and having breakthroughs in games.”