The sighs of relief kept coming a full 24 hours after the Hawaii men’s basketball team woke from its nightmare road trip.

UH arrived home on Sunday from its 10-day, near-11,000-mile journey on which the Rainbow Warriors got blitzed by double figures at three stops spread across the continental United States.

Monday’s practice — in preparation for the final homestand of the season this week — was kept short. And just being back was sweet enough.

“I think every single person on this team was happy to be back, including the guys from the mainland,” senior point guard Miah Ostrowski said with a deep breath for emphasis. “It was tough. It just feels good. I mean, it felt like a long 11 days. Bodies are tired. Mentally, I think we were tired. No excuses to why we lost or anything, we just had to go out there and play hard.”

Yet there was no denying that the travel took its toll. UH gave up an average of 97.7 points in losses at Montana, New Mexico State and Louisiana Tech. In the first two games, an opposing player achieved a triple-double, and LaTech senior Trevor Gaskins came within two assists and two rebounds of making it three straight. Not surprisingly, team defense was an emphasis in the team’s first session back at the Stan Sheriff Center.

“We went back to Basketball 101 and playing good team defense,” UH coach Gib Arnold said. “Hit that real hard, real quick, and got them out of the gym. I wanted these guys to be hungry this week and I want their legs to be fresh.”

As bad as the trip was, all is not lost for the ’Bows (15-13, 6-6), who are tied with Utah State for fourth place. UH can finish as high as third going into next week’s WAC tournament in Las Vegas if it sweeps games on Thursday against Idaho (16-12, 7-5) and Saturday against USU (15-14). Or, should their struggles continue, the ’Bows could drop to sixth.

“We still got a lot to play for, obviously. The year, as crazy as it sounds, still has a lot of basketball left in it,” Arnold said. “It’s great to be back home. I couldn’t be more happy to have two home games now.”

Ostrowski, one of three team captains, said the team did what it could to support each other after the lopsided losses. In particular, the aftermath of the 42-point drubbing at NMSU comes to mind.

“Of course it’s always frustrating when we lose. And we tried to stay positive, and I think we are as a team, overall together,” Ostrowski said. “It’s not that people were pointing fingers at anyone. It’s just, we went into every game positive and together. It was just hard to overcome. We had to play teams that were comfortable, were at home already, doing the normal things they do daily to get ready for a game.

“If people think there’s problems on this team, going into these next two games, there really isn’t,” he continued. “We just lost three games. Teams do that. All three were road games. It’s what teams go through. It’s not like we lost 10 or 15. We know that and we’re just going to come out ready.”