Hawaii ends its five-game Big West homestand tonight against a team that’s fallen off the map.

The 2016-17 season has been uncharted territory for UC Santa Barbara basketball — a sudden disappearance from relevance akin to sailing into the Bermuda Triangle.

With stars like Alan Williams and Michael Bryson, UCSB averaged nearly 20 wins over the last three seasons. By contrast, these depleted Gauchos stand at 3-15 overall and 1-5 in conference. Nineteenth-year coach Bob Williams called it “challenging. Here it’s unlike one we’ve ever had.”

His teams have never won fewer than 11 games, but that’s a distinct possibility for the Gauchos, who were forced to reinvent themselves on the fly at semester break when starting forwards Jalen Canty and Ami Lakoju went out for the rest of the season because of academic ineligibility.

Reserve frontcourt players Jarriesse Blackmon (elbow fracture) and Felix White (academic ineligibility) are also out.

To top it off, Williams said UCSB’s top two players, guards Gabe Vincent (15.4 ppg) and Eric Childress (7.9), got “banged up” in the second half of Wednesday’s 78-57 home loss to Cal State Northridge and are “day to day.”

“I think your experience helps you if you don’t overreact to losing,” Williams said upon arrival in Honolulu on Thursday. “You can lose games, but you gotta do whatever you can to keep from losing the team. You gotta find a way to make the game fun, you gotta find a way to make practice interesting. You gotta find a way to keep the guys growing together, and have some belief that if you get one or two problems fixed, you’re close enough in games, you’re good enough to win games. So that’s kind of the way you gotta grind through it.”

UCSB has been forced to play an extreme perimeter game and is shooting 36.8 percent from the field for the season, third from the bottom among 347 Division I teams ranked by the NCAA.

UH (8-11, 2-4 BWC) is wary, having just dealt firsthand with a short-handed opponent that played above expectations.

Missed opportunity

On Wednesday the Rainbow Warriors failed to take advantage of hobbled UC Riverside, which was without its usual starting backcourt. Slow ’Bows starts in both halves contributed to a 70-64 loss, marking the first time the program dropped consecutive home games in Big West play.

“Rewatching the film, we defended well in the second half. We were disorganized offensively in the second half against that changing D,” coach Eran Ganot said. “But the biggest concern was not coming out ready to play.”

But like the heart-stopping wins against Long Beach State and CSUN to start the homestand, plus a narrow loss to UC Davis, UH was in the game basically to the end.

Senior Noah Allen had a three-game streak of 25-plus points snapped against UCR. He was held to eight and became the first UH player not named Leland Green to foul out this season.

“It wasn’t very good. We were all disappointed in the performance,” Allen said. “We gotta come out and compete. Anybody can beat anybody any day. So we need to come out, execute our game plan and play to the level we’re capable of playing.”

Equal halves

UH wants to get back to playing inside-out. It was over-reliant on the 3-ball against Riverside, despite hitting a decent percentage (39.0). More than half of its field-goal attempts (26 of 49) were from long range.

“We need to get off to a better start both halves and play good basketball throughout,” associate coach Adam Jacobsen said. “One of the things that’s been hard is we’ve been playing from behind, and at the end of the game you’ve gotta make plays.”

UCSB has shown flashes of competitiveness of late. It played first-place UC Irvine within four points on Jan. 12 and lost by five at Long Beach State on Jan. 19.

“What you’re seeing is they’ve now had more time to practice with this new group. And they’re starting to play better,” Ganot said.

UH won all three meetings last year, including an 88-76 decision in the BWC tournament semifinals.