Silverswords show there is still some magic on Maui

Before the Chaminade University basketball team could be dragged off the Maui Invitational stage the Silverswords punctuated their exit with a bold reminder of just whose tournament it is anyway.

While California was the blowout victim, 96-72, KemperLesnik was clearly the intended addressee.

That’s the Chicago-based corporate entity that operates the Maui Invitational and is pledged to reducing the Silverswords’ role in the tournament going forward. Or, more likely, backward.

Beginning in 2018 Chaminade will become only a biennial participant in the holiday event that it both inspired and has hosted for 33 years.

Instead of laying in wait for their next victim at the Lahaina Civic Center, the small, D-II school on Kalaepohaku will be packed off to play on the road in even-numbered years beginning next season with trips to Arizona State and San Diego State.

In time, who knows, KemperLesnik could even banish the Silverswords altogether in the corporate interest.

While playing on the road at a D-I foe has its positives, including a nice check, it is very much a consolation prize for the school that has helped make the tournament what it has become.

A lot of D-II schools go on the road for paydays at D-I schools, but how many host their own nationally televised tournament and, on occasion, use it as a platform to knock off one of the big boys?

That’s a big difference that pays dividends for the Silverswords when they go out to recruit.

Nor is there a guarantee in the new blueprint of anything approaching the national TV time Chaminade has enjoyed and annually benefits from.

As Chaminade head coach Eric Bovaird put it in the post-game press conference, “It means a lot. It puts us on the map.”

Actually it keeps them there. It was Chaminade’s 1982 stunning upset of then-No. 1 Virginia and Ralph Sampson that prompted Cavaliers coach Terry Holland to suggest to CU athletic director Mike Vasconcellos that the Silverswords start their own tournament.

Two years later Chaminade was hosting one at the Konawaena High gym. It relocated to Maui in 1986 and hooked up with ESPN in 1987. Not until 1990 did Kemper take over operation.

Back then Chaminade’s presence was key because the NCAA required that one of its member institutions be the host if the event was to secure the exempted status necessary to attracting marquee teams.

Chaminade, said Wayne Duke, the late tournament chairman for whom the championship trophy is named, would always be a vital part of the event.

The impetus for the coming change now, of course, is that by subtracting Chaminade in even-numbered years the Maui Invitational will be able to add another D-I school to its field.

But it will also result in the tournament losing something that has helped make it special. By its mere presence and every-once-in-a-while upsets — Davidson, Providence, Stanford, Villanova, Oklahoma, Texas and, now, Cal — the Silverswords have supplied what none of the plethora of other holiday tournaments have, a genuine, time-honored, in-residence giant killer.

Wednesday, as the Star-Advertiser’s Jason Kaneshiro tweeted in the waning minutes, the only drama in this one was whether the Silverswords would break 100 points on Cal.

Alas, that didn’t happen but victory was still sweet for its timing. And, so was the message laid on KemperLesnik’s doorstep in the process.

As Bovaird said in opening Wednesday’s press conference: “How about those Silverswords, huh?”

Indeed.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.