’Bows sink lower after another loss

Yet another loss to a Big West cellar dweller has Hawaii in the pits.

The Rainbow Warriors reached another low, losing 77-71 to Cal State Northridge before a crowd of 4,061 on Saturday night at the Stan Sheriff Center.

UH (13-10, 4-6 Big West), a first-place team through five games of conference play, lost its fifth straight, including a third to a team in the bottom half of the conference standings. CSUN (6-19, 3-8) snapped a five-game losing streak after UC Riverside ended a 10-game slide at UH’s expense on Wednesday.

Or, as coach Eran Ganot put it, “two weeks of hell.”

“We all have to step up and embrace the struggle,” he said. “This thing hurts. It’s very painful. But we have to do something about it, instead of just taking it.”

The only Big West team without a conference win at the Sheriff shot a sizzling 65.1 percent to end that distinction. The Matadors’ Tavrion Dawson and Micheal Warren split 44 points on 17-for-25 shooting, while point guard Terrell Gomez added 16.

“We’re not deserving of a successful result when we defend like that,” Ganot said.

The ’Bows have six games remaining until the Big West tournament. Forward Gibson Johnson searched for positives in the postgame.

“Obviously we never want to be in this situation, but that doesn’t mean just because we lost a couple games in a row we can’t bounce back or make anything of the season,” Johnson said. “We still have high hopes.”

The Rainbows got a season-high-tying 17 points from point guard Drew Buggs (3-for-3 on 3s), while forward Mike Thomas added 14.

“We’ll get back,” Buggs said. “We had a talk and I think everybody on the team is ready to make that change we need to make in order to fix it this last stretch of the season. It’s something that’s hard to change overnight, with the way we’ve been struggling, but I’m confident we will change it. We have the right mind-set … and we have to continue to work at it. You can’t give up on our principles just because we’re in a rough stretch right now.”

CSUN snapped a seven-game losing streak in the series, earning its first win over UH since the 2014 Big West tournament first round.

“It’s important for our program, important for our school, important for the psyche of our players,” Matadors coach Reggie Theus said. “This is a tough place to play.”

It was the third time in conference play an opponent shot 60-plus percent against UH. CSUN shot 27.5 percent and scored 46 points in a 19-point loss at the Matadome last month.

Man, zone, nothing seemed to work.

“We know how they play, and we tried as much as possible to use their own defensive rules against them,” Theus said. “But when it’s all said and done, you make shots. And we made shots. That makes the difference in any situation. What I like the most is we took one bad shot in the second half, and we got to the rim.”

CSUN used a 9-0 run late in the first half to take an eight-point lead. UH got the last basket of the half, a Jack Purchase elbow jumper, but still trailed 37-31 at intermission.

That was despite UH shooting 64.7 percent; it committed all but one of its 12 turnovers in the period and CSUN shot 62.5 percent itself.

“There were two unbelievably glaring, tough numbers,” Ganot said. “The 11 turnovers were the second-worst thing. How were we down only six? … Those were the two points of emphasis. We were able to fix one.”

UH got within three early in the second half, but Dawson sank three straight buckets to extend that back to 48-39 with about 14 minutes to play.

“We knew we had to shut him down if we wanted to win the game,” Johnson said. “We were unable to do that. Credit to him.”

CSUN made five straight shots, capped by a layup, to go up double digits for the first time with under nine minutes remaining.

“We just gotta do a better job of keeping our man in front, to where we don’t have to help as much,” Buggs said. “If we do have to help, we’ve just gotta do a better job of rotating right now. It’s like we’re a step slow.”

Sheriff Drammeh fouled Warren on a corner 3 with 4:11 left. He made all three for a 14-point lead and fans started streaming for the exits not long after. The margin reached 16 before UH’s reserves closed the gap in garbage time.