A busy day of basketball with two University of Hawaii at Hilo games followed by high school playoff games got off to a slow start at Hilo Civic on Saturday when the scheduled 11 a.m. tipoff for the Vulcans-Chaminade game was delayed by 27 minutes because of an inoperable shot clock.
By the time they decided to start the game anyway — time on the shot clock was called out every five seconds through the public address system — the Vulcans’ offense was as non-functional as the clock, but it woke up after delayed start, took over in the second half and claimed a 59-53 victory, their third in a row and fourth in the last five games. The clock was finally fixed in the second quarter.
“I’m just happy for these kids,” said UH-Hilo coach David Kaneshiro, “they really persevered as a group at times when they could have, you know, cashed in or given up but they hung with it.”
They have worked themselves into as winning record in the conference and they seem to just keep improving in the second half of the season.
“They outplayed us,” said Chaminade coach Bobby Keanini. “(Kaneshiro) does a really good job with them and today they made us play their kind of game. We want to be more up tempo, but they were slowing the pace, walking the ball up the court and then I looked up and we were walking the ball up the court.
“They definitely got us playing their game,” Keanini said, “and I thought that was the difference. They were better than us.”
The Vulcans (8-7 in the Pacific West Conference, 8-12 overall), trailed from the start, tied it momentarily a 2-2, then played catch up the rest of the first half until freshman Kim Schmelz hit a jumper with 1.9 seconds left to give UHH a 21-19 halftime lead.
The Vulcans opened it up in the third quarter, outscoring the Silverswords (5-12, 5-15) by 20-9 to take a commanding lead. The Vulcans used the second and third quarters to pile up a 33-15 advantage and by the time Chaminade made a run, it was too late.
“We couldn’t shake them,” Kaneshiro said. “We played a lot of time with an eight or nine-point lead then you would look up and it was six all of a sudden so we had to keep working the whole game.
Junior Sydney Mercer led the Vulcans with 20 points, Schmelz had 12 and between them they were 12-of-20 from the floor while the rest of their teammates combined to go just 8-for-33.
“It’s always good to have two players do that,” Kaneshiro said of the combined shooting of Mercer and Schmelz, “but it’s really a big thing in a game in the 50s.”
