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JAMM AQUINO / JAQUINO@STARADVERTISER.COM
Hawaii guard Roderick Bobbitt drives to the basket over UC Riverside forward Robert Boezeman during the first half of game tonight at the Stan Sheriff Center.
Hawaii’s road to a Big West Conference regular-season title hit a major speed bump tonight.
UC Riverside rolled into the Stan Sheriff Center and escaped with a 77-71 victory, snapping the Rainbow Warriors’ six-game winning streak.
UH dropped to 22-4 overall and 11-2 in the Big West Conference. It still holds sole possession of first place heading into Saturday’s sold-out senior night against Cal State Northridge.
The Highlanders (14-15, 5-8) snapped their own four-game losing streak behind 20 points from Jaylen Bland, 19 from Secean Johnson and 18 from DJ Sylvester.
The hotly contested game saw the teams jawing at each other several times throughout, especially in the second half. A handful of technical fouls were assessed.
UH trailed by four at halftime and spent most of the second half attempting a comeback. The Rainbows rallied to take the lead 67-65, then 69-68, for the last time.
UCR connected on free throws to close it out — 27-for-32 as a team, 84.4 percent.
Aaron Valdes led UH with 23 points on 8-for-17 shooting, including a career-high five 3-pointers made.
UC Riverside was in 5th place in the Conference. Now UH still needs to win the conference championship tournament to get into the Show. Someone asked if Ganot figured out the zone everyone now plays against UH, didn’t see anything different here. Also still getting technical.
Trouble is this conference is so minor league that no one will notice who wins it.
I blame Coach Ganot for the loss. The team wasn’t ready to play.
Ganot got no control over players…it shows!
ever heard of self-control?
Ever heard of the word coach? A coach coaches discipline and composure among other things…
That was not good. We now have a bad loss. Everyone set this one up, talking like it was a W before the game was even played. This was ugly and once again UH proved the pundits right……
Seems to me when the refs begin to get in Hawaii Players head it’s time for the coach to step up and get a T. The coach gets the T’s and the players relax and play. That how it should be. There is too much emotion out there and players tend to get out of control. The coach must show them he has their backs. Ganot is too dang quiet. At least with the officials. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem like this conference wants Hawaii to win. Maybe. Maybe not. As far as the zone goes. What happened to using two big men at the same time and having the guards penetrate and dump to the big men. This team was too small and coach let them control the boards. Not good
it seems UH took this game for granted and got burned for it.
it’s like they did not practice their shooting and they did not
go to Jankovic like they should have.
I give riverside credit but UH should have never lost to this team.
now I wonder if this team can win the regular season title let
alone get to the dance.
UH cannot afford any more let downs like this.
UCR did a good job of holding Janks down.
Gamot has to explain to the team their reputation on the court follows them no matter where they play. Go Bows win on Senior Night.
Serves them right for losing this
game. Too much talk about going to
the Big Dance when you can’t even
win a mediocre conference. 3 winnable
games before LBSU starts off with an
L. CSUN will be coming in with a huge
chip on their shoulder and Hawai’i
better be on their toes. Very good
Hawai’i team but not great.
Learn and move on. Boo birds so critical of loss. It happens.
Lost their composure and started whining to the refs. UCR got into the UH’s players heads. In sports or in life, once you let that happens, they got you. The game was that close only because UCR is not that good. Bobbitt should have been ejected. In this case, I’m glad they lost. They didn’t deserve to win.
Typical. This like every sports at UH is always over-hyped by the media.