That Was Close

FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARADVERTISER.COM

Hawaii Pacific's Marko Cukic fouled Hawaii's Shaquille Stokes on Stokes' first-half drive.

Preseason hype only gets you so far.

In an exhibition against Hawaii Pacific on Friday night at the Stan Sheriff Center, "so far" was just far enough for the Hawaii men's basketball team. The Rainbow Warriors needed a late comeback to beat their Division II neighbor 62-56.

The first live-action look at the 2011-12 team was sometimes alarming for the turnstile crowd of 3,806, though the result didn't officially count. It was a ragged display against a theoretically inferior opponent.

A 10-0 HPU run put the Sea Warriors ahead 49-42 with 8:17 to play. But senior guard Zane Johnson tied it up at 52 with 4:54 left, and junior forward Joston Thomas, who spent most of the game on the bench, helped rescue UH with some energetic play down the stretch. He had the go-ahead fadeaway jumper with 1:37 to play.

UH's preseason All-WAC selections, Johnson and Vander Joaquim, did enough to bail out the 'Bows. Johnson had 21 points, including five 3-pointers, and Joaquim had 12 points, 13 rebounds and six blocked shots.

It was a shaky start for some of the UH newcomers, however.

"We probably were a little overhyped coming into the game," said freshman point guard Shaquille Stokes, one of three players new to the starting lineup. The WAC Preseason Newcomer of the Year shot 2-for-10 with four assists and six turnovers, but Stokes helped seal it with two free throws and a steal that turned into a dunk assist to reserve guard Garrett Jefferson in the final seconds.

"We wanted to play and do a lot of things we normally didn't do in the flow of the offense, which led to a lot of mistakes," Stokes added. "But (we'll) look at some film and see what we did. It'll be totally different on Monday night."

The Rainbow Warriors have just a couple of days to tweak things before their regular-season opener vs. Cal State Northridge on Monday. It's an 11 p.m. start for the ESPN College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon.

If second-year coach Gib Arnold was concerned about a similar effort on national TV, he wasn't showing it in postgame interviews.

"Our best basketball is still ahead of us and we showed we have a long ways to go," Arnold said. "We struggled to get into an offensive flow. I give HPU a lot of credit for that."

Joaquim was often swarmed in the low post, which bogged down the UH offense. It contributed to 17 'Bows turnovers against nine assists.

"We gotta work on that," Arnold said. "When a guy gets doubled, that's a good thing."

UH shot 38.9 percent from the floor, but applied sufficient defense of its own (HPU shot 34.4 percent) to redeem itself at the end.

HPU — which was picked to finish sixth in the PacWest Conference — dogged UH the whole way. Sea Warriors coach Darren Vorderbruegge had plenty to be pleased about.

"This is exactly what the doctor ordered, maybe just a few points shy of what we'd really like," the HPU coach said. "We can only benefit if we take this and learn from it."

Recruits sign

Earlier Friday, Arnold announced the signings of two players with the maximum four years of eligibility.

Caleb Dressler, a 6-foot-10, 240-pound senior center at Evergreen High in Vancouver, Wash., and Orel Lev, a 6-foot-4, 190-pound shooting guard from Tel Aviv, Israel, will play for the Rainbow Warriors starting in the 2012-13 season.

Dressler averaged about 17 points, 14.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocks per game during his junior season.

"He'll be the center of our future," Arnold said of Dressler, who picked UH over Portland State and Montana State. "He was one of the top players in the state of Washington."

Lev shot 40 percent on 3-pointers on his way to a 25-point average with five assists per game in his last season at Ironi Tet High School. He also has experience playing for the Maccabi Tel Aviv amateur team and captained the Israeli Under-18 national team.