Hawaii falls flat in visit to Big West leaders

DAVIS, Calif. >> Hawaii won the opening tip-off on Thursday night at the Pavilion on the campus of UC Davis. Drew Buggs promptly took a 3-pointer and came up short of the rim.

That’s all you need to know about the Rainbow Warriors’ offense in the first half of a 70-59 loss to Davis. Hawaii scored just 21 points in the first half, a season low. That came after scoring 24 points in the first half of the Warriors’ previous game, a loss at home against UC Irvine.

“We just took the half off,” said Hawaii coach Eran Ganot. “That’s the bottom line. We take pride in being ready to go out of the gates starting halves.

“I think we weren’t ready to go, to be honest, to start the game.”

One key to the first half was the Warriors making just seven of 22 shots from the field (32 percent). Another was 12 turnovers.

“I think just taking care of the ball,” forward Gibson Johnson said. “We got a lot of turnovers in the first half. That’s not a characteristic of our team, but that’s happened to us the last two games. We dug too big of a hole to climb out of.”

The Aggies (20-9, 11-4 Big West) didn’t exactly start the game on fire themselves. They struggled to get anything going on offense early and led just 12-10 when Samuta Avea scored on a putback for Hawaii with 11 minutes, 36 seconds to go in the half. For the next 103 seconds, neither team could score, combining for four turnovers and three missed shots.

However, Siler Schneider buried a 3-pointer for Davis just past the midway point of the half that seemed to get the Aggies going. It sparked a 7-0 run, and by the final minutes of the half, they were up double digits. It was 36-21 at the break, UH’s largest intermission deficit of the season.

“We didn’t defend the entire game,” Ganot said. “We did force turnovers, so that part of our defense was really good. But we tried to match them with our turnovers. A lot of unforced turnovers.”

Things got better in the second half. The Warriors (16-12, 7-8) rallied and cut the lead to eight at one point. Better defense was in the mix — twice Hawaii forced shot-clock violations. Better shooting also helped: The Warriors made 12 of 26 field goals in the second half. And a better job of taking care of the ball really helped, with Hawaii committing just four turnovers after halftime.

But it wasn’t quite enough. The Warriors got the ball down 60-52 with 4:48 to go. Leland Green then missed a reverse layup that would have cut it to six.

Two nifty plays by the Aggies were killers. Hawaii was down 62-52 with the ball. T.J. Shorts (game-high 21 points) tipped a pass away, then hustled to get the ball at the far sideline just before it went out of bounds, drove to the basket and made a reverse layup.

A couple of minutes later, A.J. John fed Garrison Goode underneath the basket for another reverse layup just before the shot clock expired.

“And we missed two reverse layups,” Ganot lamented.

Hawaii finishes the regular season on Saturday at Cal State Fullerton (17-10, 10-5). The Warriors could finish fifth or sixth in the final standings, with the conference tournament following in Anaheim beginning Thursday. Long Beach State (14-17, 8-7) has the leg up for fifth thanks to its buzzer-beating win at UC Santa Barbara on Thursday.

Davis, meantime, has a chance to win the Big West regular-season title outright with a win at UC Irvine on Saturday. The Aggies lost to the Anteaters in the same situation last year, but then won the Big West tournament to qualify for the NCAA tournament.