It was March sadness for the Hawaii men’s basketball team.
Cal State Northridge’s 82-73 victory ended the Rainbow Warriors’ season.
In Premier America Credit Union Arena on the CSUN campus, the ’Bows failed to qualify for this coming week’s Big West Tournament in Henderson, Nev. Only eight of the 11 Big West teams earn berths. It was the first time the ’Bows missed the tournament since joining the Big West in the 2012-13 season. (The tournament was not played in 2020 because of the pandemic.)
The ’Bows, who finished 15-16 overall and 7-13 in the Big West, suffered their first losing record in conference play since 2012, when they were members of the Western Athletic Conference.
The ’Bows entered this two-game road trip in seventh place, needing to defeat Cal State Bakersfield on Thursday or CSUN on Saturday to clinch a tournament spot. After losing to CSUB, they had two chances on Saturday: beat CSUN or Long Beach State upsetting Cal Poly. Neither occurred.
“It hurts,” UH coach Eran Ganot said in a telephone interview.
The ’Bows had a 39-33 lead over CSUN with 1:20 left in the first half. But Tom Beattie’s pass to Tanner Christensen was picked off by Tyler Beard. Christensen inadvertently fell onto Beard during the scramble. Christensen was assessed a flagrant-1 foul. Beard sank both free throws and, with CSUN awarded possession, Scotty Washington buried a 3 to close the Matadors to 39-38 at the intermission.
“You’ve got to overcome that,” Ganot said of the Matadors’ surge.
The Matadors scored nine of the first 11 points of the second half on two 3s and a three-point play. UH cut the deficit to 51-50. But the Matadors reeled off 12 unanswered points to extend the advantage to 63-50 with 12:05 to go.
One of those nights epitomized several of those weeks for the ’Bows, who dropped 10 of their last 13. During that period, the ’Bows made too many unforced turnovers.
“You always see flashes of (mistakes) in a game, but not the consistency of it,” Ganot said. “Our defense was OK (this year), but it’s always been really good there.”
The past four games, the ’Bows have been without Kody Williams, their best point-of-attack defender. On Saturday, Harry Rouhliadeff, who can play forward and center, suffered a shoulder injury in the game’s first three minutes.
Through intensive practices, Ganot held to the belief that “we always finish strong and find a level. And I thought we were about to.”
But the Matadors canceled those hopes with Marcus Adams Jr. scoring 21 points, and Beard coming off the bench to hit all four of his 3-point attempts and finish with 19 points.
“People have down years, but I’m not OK with it,” Ganot said. “Hawaii deserves the best. I am proud of the quality of people we have. They did a nice job of sticking together. … Nobody wanted the season we’ve had to happen. We thought we could have broken through. But it didn’t happen. You can’t get it back. All you can do is do something about it.”
On entering the final year of a contract extension, Ganot said, “you control what you can control.”
He added: “I think we worked hard to develop some of the young guys we have, and we’ve had success. To be honest, we go into this offseason with more knowledge (of name, image and likeness deals). … We’ve positioned ourselves to have a great offseason in terms of development and recruiting. With a year under our belts of studying the new landscape, too, that could really help us. … We’re going to use that experience and knowledge from this year, and put a great team together, and go from there. That’s where our focus is. That’s what we can control. … There’s a lot to be excited about. Right now, it hurts.”
