This needs to be the year that the University of Hawaii men’s basketball team finally sheds its streak of Big West Conference mediocrity.
For the better part of the past five seasons now the Rainbow Warriors have been mired in the predictability of their Big West Conference performance. Predictably smack dab average, that is.
They have finished the regular season this year at 9-9, their fourth .500 season in five years and fifth in seven years. Last year UH was a .500 team in a nine-member conference. This season it is a .500 member in a 10-member league. Progress this isn’t.
And they’ve lost their opening-round game of the conference tournament three consecutive years. It might have been four but last year’s tournament was canceled due to COVID-19.
The lack of opportunity to cut down the nets at the end on the way to the Big Dance has been disappointing because this is the Big West, not the West Coast Conference or even the Mountain West Conference. There is no dominating force such as a Gonzaga or a San Diego State that must be reckoned with.
What they face is a mix of Cal State and UC Who-da-Guys in a neighborhood where UH should be the most formidable presence or at least in the thick of the scrap. Avoiding the ignominy of the play-in game should not be the bar that they have to huff and puff to surpass.
This is, for the most part, as someone once labeled it, a bus league in which UH has the best facilities, the best following, the most visibility and the best resources. But not a whole lot to show for it of late at season’s end.
What UH hasn’t had for the past five years is a real stretch run at a title. Not since the memorable 2015-16 season have the ‘Bows won or really contested for a championship, regular season or conference tournament.
If UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and UC Davis can do it, why not UH?
That is again the question as the Big West tournament opens up in the neutral site of Las Vegas this week, vacating the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., due to the pandemic.
UC Santa Barbara is the most talented team and the favorite based on its 19-4 (13-3 Big West) record. But that hasn’t always meant much in the Big West, where only two of the past seven champions have been top seeds. Heck, one year (2014) seventh-seeded Cal Poly even managed to win the thing with a losing conference record (6-10). Two tournaments ago it was fourth-seeded Fullerton.
So, there is a path toward claiming the big prize, the Big West’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament, if only UH can finally rise up and seize it.
Beginning Thursday, that will take three consecutive nights of solid performances. The kind of consistency that the Rainbow Warriors should be capable of by now but have so far been unable to link together this season. Avoid some of those chronic, prolonged scoring droughts and that can change.
Get past UC Riverside (13-7, 8-4) in the quarterfinals on Thursday and probably UC Irvine (16-8, 10-4) in Friday’s semifinal, and the ‘Bows will be in the championship game. They are two teams the Rainbow Warriors have split with and are entirely capable of putting away.
After too many years of early exits, this is a year the ‘Bows need to rise above mediocrity.
STUCK IN A RUT
BWC Tourney Season W-L RESULT
2020-21 9-9 TBD
2019-20 8-8 Canceled
2018-19 9-7 0-1
2017-18 8-8 0-1
2016-17 8-8 0-1
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
