It was tough and tight all night, and at the end it was just a bit too much for the University of Hawaii at Hilo in a competitive and edgy 72-66 loss to Seattle Pacific at Hilo Civic on Friday night.
It was tough and tight all night, and at the end it was just a bit too much for the University of Hawaii at Hilo in a competitive and edgy 72-66 loss to Seattle Pacific at Hilo Civic on Friday night.
The Falcons managed a two-game non conference sweep over the Vulcans after a victor earlier in Seattle in the championship game of an early season tournament in the SPU gym
The victory lifted the Falcons to 5-5 and knocked UHH back to 3-6.
After the game Hawaii Hilo coach GE Coleman visited the SPU locker room to tell the Falcons that some rough play and hard feelings at the end was out of the hands of the players.
“I just wanted to let them know that I respected them and didn’t hold anything against them,” Coleman said. “That’s a good team, but the game got out of hand.”
Mostly, it was dominated by SPU with a huge 47-25 edge on the boards. The Vulcans concerted 20 of 22 free throws, Parker Farris led the way for both teams with 30 points, but it wasn’t enough.
Twice in the last five minutes the Vulcans were able to trim the lead to four points, but on the first occasion, the Falcons Will Parker seemed to slip on a wet spot on the floor and slid for a few feet yet he was not called for traveling and then with the restart scored basket for a 65-59 lead.
They got it back to four at 65-61 on two Farris free throws but Ishola missed a heavily contested shot under the basket and Seattle Pacific’s Joe Rasmussen made a free throw for a 66-61 lead prior to a midrange jumper by Farris that closed the gap to 66-63 with 38.3 left.
Up by five at the half, the Falcons nudged their lead to 12 at the start of the second half when they went on a 9-2 spurt to open the advantage to 40-28 and then made it 42-30 before Hawaii Hilo started its uphill climb.
Randan Berinobis sparked the offense with a baseline reverse layup which was followed by two Parker Farris free throws on an SPU technical foul, then Darius Johnson-Wilson converted two more to make it 49-43 with 10:53 left.
Seattle Pacific leveraged its 31-26 first half lead mostly on the strength of its rebounding, a 24-7 advantage that started out 11-0 with the Falcons keeping the Vulcans’ top rebounder Brian Ishola off the boards completely, the first time this season Ishola had not grabbed a first half rebound.
Ishola led the PWC in offensive rebounding with 3.0 per game and is tied for fifth in total rebounds with 7.2 per game.
Hawaii Hilo stayed in the game thanks to the conversion of turnovers by the Falcons who had 12 turnovers to 8 for the Vulcans who got 12 points off those mistakes while Seattle Pacific was able to get seven points off turnovers, a point of emphasis all week by Coleman.
The Vulcans are back at The Civic Monday for a return to conference competition when they host Dominican at 7:30 p.m. following the women’s game at 5 p.m.