There is life remaining in the Hawaii Hilo women’s basketball team after a sometime bizarre but ultimately delightful 54-51 win over Point Loma Nazarene Tuesday night at The Civic.
There is life remaining in the Hawaii Hilo women’s basketball team after a sometime bizarre but ultimately delightful 54-51 win over Point Loma Nazarene Tuesday night at The Civic.
The victory left the Vulcans, 10-9 in Pacific West Conference play and 10-14 overall while Point Loma fell to 10-8 and 17-9, in the sixth and last playoff spot. Hawaii Hilo plays its final game Saturday at 5 p.m. against second place Azusa Pacific (16-1 and 22-3 overall), winners of 10 straight prior to Tuesday’s game at BYU-Hawaii.
A win Saturday, combined with one more Point Loma loss against either Hawaii Pacific (Thursday), or Chaminade (Saturday), would get the Vulcans into the postseason tournament.
(The men’s game between the Vuls and Sea Lions ended after the Trib’s early print deadline. For the story, visit www.hawaiitribune-herald.com)
“All we’ve been playing for all season has been a chance to get in the tournament,” said junior Lauren Hong, who had 14 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists. “We feel like if we win, we’re in.”
Hong was a major factor in getting them this far, whether Point Loma loses again or not.
Hawaii Hilo made five of its first six baskets from beyond the arc, three of them by Hong and in the first half the Vulcans completed an unusual statistic by going 8-for-13 from 3-point range and 3-for-20 from inside the arc.
“We worked against their zone in practice and we found some good gaps that we could drive through and then either take the shot or kick it out,” Hong said. “We were open early and we were hitting those (3-point) shots.”
It’s not supposed to work that way, but UHH used it for a 17-0 start with 5:17 left in the quarter and then didn’t score again until the second quarter. Kim Schmelz, starting for the first time in 22 days, turned a 17-7 first quarter lead into a 22-7 lead with two free throws and a 3-pointer but Point Loma then got back in the game after a 12-2 run made it 24-19.
The Sea Lions kept chipping away and finally caught the Vulcans and took the lead 51-48 on a 3-pointer by Madison West with 1:32 left, but that was the last points they scored. Kim Schmelz scored on two free throws to get the lead down to one and Vanessa Mancera got the lead back with 16.8 seconds to go when she took the ball down the baseline and converted a layup.
Fittingly, Hong, who started it all with her burst of 3-pointers early, finished it with two free throws at 3.1 seconds to register the final score.
“I’m just proud of the way they hung in, the way they battled,” said Hilo coach David Kaneshiro. “We talked about attacking their zone, we worked on it and they did a great job in that regard. Later, they switched to a man-to-man approach and that caused us some problems but we sort of regained our footing, just in time.”
He felt the enthusiasm his team showed was crucial to the win.
“Our bench was alive,” Kaneshiro said. “You don’t always have to play to help the team win and that was exemplified tonight by the great leadership of (senior) Alia Alvarez, she was keeping them going the whole time and her contributions mattered.”
The Sea Lions could have used some of that, after leading only once, for a few seconds.
“We’re a better team than that,” said Point Loma coach Bill Westphal, “but you wouldn’t know it from watching us tonight. I’m not sure we can play any worse than that.”
Westphal, the older brother of USC legend and former NBA All-Star Paul Westphal, is retiring after the next two games and would like nothing more than to finish with a playoff berth, but his team didn’t look the part Tuesday.
“I’ve always said, basketball is a simple game, pass the ball, catch the ball, and then shoot the ball,” he said. “It’s really not that difficult a game to play, but we made it hard on ourselves tonight.
“Don’t take anything away from (the Vulcans),” he said, “Dave has them going good and they played smart and tough tonight, whereas we didn’t do either.
Hawaii Hilo played without junior Alexa Jacobs who reinjured her right knee and is questionable for the final game Saturday.