It was nice to be home again for the Hawaii Hilo women’s basketball team Thursday night when it snapped a three-game losing streak and were able to complete their first victory of the season in three games on their campus
It was nice to be home again for the Hawaii Hilo women’s basketball team Thursday night when it snapped a three-game losing streak and were able to complete their first victory of the season in three games on their campus gym with a 62-54 victory over Fresno Pacific.
The victory improved the Vulcans to 6-9 in the Pacific West Conference, 6-12 overall and dropped the Sunbirds to 2-13 in conference play and 5-18 on the season.
Senior Sydney Mercer had one of her best games with a double double, scoring 22 points and pulling down 10 rebounds, the latter stat one off the team high of 11 by Asia Smith.
Leading scorer Kim Schmelz had her season average of 14 for the Vulcans, Bree Alvarez had 18 for the Sunbirds.
The Vulcans led almost the entire first quarter, by as many as eight points on a couple of occasions, with a dominating performance on the boards by Asia Smith who pulled down seven rebounds in the quarter when UHH took a 19-13 lead.
It was 32-25 at the half, but the Sunbirds came out like a different team in the second half when Hawaii Hilo missed its first four shots and FPU went on a 10-0 unto take a 35-32 lead when Kaneshiro called a timeout.
Lauren Hong got them back on the scoreboard with a 3-point shot to tie it, then Kim Schmelz knocked down another 3 to regain the lead, and Fresno Pacific never regained the lead, though it kept it close all the way to the end.
“That’s our M.O.” said FPU coach Tim Beauregard, “tight losses, we’ve had a lot of them.”
The third quarter burst by FPU brought a new focus to the Vulcans after the timeout.
“We played almost a complete game,” said Mercer. “They kept making runs at us, but we kept pushing, our intensity was where it needed to be tonight, that’s what we have to keep up.”
This was the third consecutive game with senior guard Vanessa Mancera, but this is a team that has become used to constant lineup changes.
“People just keep stepping up,” Mercer said. “It sucks that we had to go without (Mancera), it sucked when we had to play without Kim, when Asia was out, it’s been a different lineup all the time.
“The big thing is, we didn’t get rattled,” she said. “As long as we can do that, we’ll be okay.”
Alvarez put a charge in her team with three 3-pointers in the 10-0 third quarter run which caused concern for UHH coach David Kaneshiro.
“Alvarez is really a good player,” he said, “we knew she was going to get some points, but after that run in the second half we were able to settle down a bit.
“We showed a lot of heart tonight,” Kaneshiro said, “We had a little bit of a size advantage so we tried to get the ball inside to our posts as often as we could and I thought they all did a good job for us, they all made good decisions for the most part, we could have finished better, but we’ll take this.”
The Vulcans host BYU-Hawaii Saturday at 5 p.m. at Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium.
