Gameday: at UC Santa Barbara
Hawaii’s marathon road trip is finally coming to an end.
Can the Rainbow Warriors close it out with an ESPNU-televised win at UC Santa Barbara on Saturday? It would move fourth-place UH (16-8, 4-4 Big West) to an impressive 3-1 on its four-game odyssey through California.
UH seems to have caught a break with Alan Williams still shelved with a shoulder injury. He certainly changes the complexion of the game, as we saw two years ago when he missed the UH-UCSB game at the Thunderdome with another injury. Christian Standhardinger went off in points (31) and rebounds (16), while Vander Joaquim also posted a double-double.
Last year was a different story, as Standhardinger was held to 18 and seven and Isaac Fotu was ineffective with Williams throwing his weight around.
And, of course, there was the well-publicized fan incident. A UCSB student (since banned from the arena) ran up to Gib Arnold during a dead ball and got in the coach’s face. UH players showed a good deal of restraint in pushing the idiot away.
The fifth-place Gauchos (10-11, 3-4) are 2-2 without Williams, but are coming off losses at UC Davis and UC Irvine in which they were also hit hard by the flu bug. They should be back to something closer to full health and playing with a desperate edge.
Another loss that shouldn’t have happened, once again , poor shooting, and what happened to our defense during the 15-1 run, we are now 25 games into the season , no more excuses, just foolish decisions, no half court offense, where is Janks, we needed him, Valdes shot 4-16 -and 0 from 3pt line . Coach seems to show favoritism to Valdes . We need to open up the coaching search after the season ends.
Upsetting to watch the end, we blew a good lead… once again, after 25 games , we still need a half court offense. That’s the coach’s responisbility
The last shot by Fleming was ruled a 2 pointer right after he made the shot, per a mainland fan/ commenter. The replay shows the ref signaling a two pointer at that moment. ESPNU showed something different for the score, at first.
( see about the 7th post below for the pic)
http://bigwest.yuku.com/topic/17619/UC-Santa-Barbara-75-Hawaii-74?page=2#.VNfE4C4YEq2
Yes, the officials correctly had it as a 2 and the scoreboard in the Thunderdome had it as 75-74, while ESPN was incorrect on the broadcast. I wrote about this for Monday’s newspaper. Still a very disappointing sequence of events for Benjy Taylor’s group. They would have liked to have seen the officials blow it dead with 1.1 seconds and make their review then, so UH would know what it had to do in regard to a quick foul or gamble for a steal on the final play.
Any other school would’ve been granted the 3, no matter TV replay, whatever.
Hawaii wasn’t granted the tray because . . . they’re Hawaii. Thanks, refs.