Gameday: at UC Riverside

UC Riverside may have found something of a rhythm in the Stan Sheriff Center, having won there twice in a row. Hawaii can return the favor today at Riverside’s SRC Arena, where the Rainbow Warriors won by nine last year.

UH (9-11, 3-4 Big West) is 3-2 all-time at the 3,100-seat SRC. This year’s edition is on ESPN3, with tipoff at 6 p.m. HST.

The Highlanders (6-12, 4-3) succeeded in bottling up Noah Allen last time (just eight days ago, a 70-64 UCR win), the only game in UH’s five-game homestand in which Allen did not go off. Chiefly, 6-foot-5 wing Secean Johnson helped get him in foul trouble and ultimately foul him out.

Both teams talked about Riverside’s rapidly switching defenses getting the better of UH last time. Riverside knows Hawaii knows, so it’ll be interesting to see how much of it (or none of it) is employed today. UCR coach Dennis Cutts called the reasonably quick rematch a “chess match.”

UH is feeling good about what it did in between, a 22-point demolition of UC Santa Barbara. No one had double-figure scoring besides Allen’s career-high 34, but Jack Purchase had a career-high six assists and Ido Flaisher had his best game off the bench in some time with eight points and seven rebounds.

The Rainbow Warriors will attempt to do what the Rainbow Wahine could not.

Riverside is favored by 3.5 points.