Quick Reads

When all the Twitter votes were counted, the 2015-16 team was deemed the best of all in the 100 years of University of Hawaii men’s basketball. This edition could already be described as the most accomplished, with the records for most wins and the only UH victory in NCAA Tournament play, as Hawaii finally won on its fifth and most recent dance invitation. This came 14 years after UH’s last previous appearance. That was by the 2001-02 team, which was […]

I asked some current University of Hawaii basketball players who they like to go all the way as we’ve arrived at the Final Four of our UH men’s hoops online tournament. Justin Hemsley and Zoar Nedd are also members of the sports media class I taught at Crawford Hall before we were forced into cyberspace. Sitting between them at a Rainbow Wahine game a few weeks back, I learned that in addition to possessing physical gifts both are astute students […]

Four decades and four distinct eras of University of Hawaii basketball are represented in the Final Four of our 100th Season Best-Team Bracket virtual tournament. Any fan or innocent passerby with a Twitter account can vote to help determine the greatest team in the first 100 years of the program. Here are your semifinal matchups, with voting to come on Saturday. (The final will be contested next Monday — which would have been the date of the finale of March […]

After the first round of our virtual tournament to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the start of University of Hawaii basketball, our seeding committee can feel pretty good about itself (not that we don’t always in general, or at least most of the time). Well, that is if we’re judging our efforts based on voting on Twitter. Hmm, OK. Now’s a good time for some context, right? Or, in other words, for me to explain what the heck we’re talking […]

As a player, Carl English never had a senior night, and that is to the dismay of many University of Hawaii basketball fans who like to speculate on what might have happened if English had come back for his final season of eligibility, 2003-04. To them, it was a waste, because English was not picked in the NBA Draft. What they seem to forget, though, is that English got something more important than a senior night at UH celebrating his […]

The retirement tonight of University of Hawaii basketball great Bob Nash‘s jersey with the number 33 on it (I’ll explain the reason for that awkward wording later) makes me think about what other UH athletes from various sports deserve that honor. For men’s basketball, two come to mind: Anthony Carter (23) and Tom Henderson (14) … (thank you to Rod Aldridge for the reminder of what number his teammate Henderson wore). Maybe No. 14 in football, too? That would be […]