Deliverance came from the short corner on Monday night.

With the seconds ticking down on another tight game in the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic, Christian Standhardinger sprung free from Saint Mary’s defenders along the left baseline.

Keith Shamburger’s pass was on point. Standhardinger put up the 15-footer with no hesitation over lunging Saint Mary’s center Brad Waldow and it found all net with 1.4 seconds left as the Stan Sheriff Center crowd of under 5,000 erupted. Standhardinger batted down the Gaels’ desperation fullcourt inbounds pass as Hawaii prevailed, 76-74.

"It feels great, it feels great," said Standhardinger, who finished with 22 points, nine rebounds and four steals a night after scoring just seven points in a 62-61 loss to Boise State. He was 14-for-17 from the free-throw line.

For the fourth straight year, Hawaii found itself in the consolation bracket of its holiday tournament. And for the fourth straight year, the Rainbow Warriors found a way to get to the event’s consolation championship game. UH will play Oregon State (7-3) of the Pac-12 for fifth place at 11 a.m. on Christmas Day.

The winning sequence came on a designed play coming out of a timeout with 21.1 seconds left once the Gaels’ Beau Levesque missed a potential go-ahead free throw. Shamburger, who first killed clock outside the arc, drove and had options between Standhardinger and Isaac Fotu, who was to roll to the basket after setting a ball screen.

"Don’t forget Keith Shamburger," Standhardinger said. "That was an amazing assist. I was wide open, short corner, exactly where I wanted to have the ball. That’s why you know he’s a great point guard."

Shamburger had six assists and no turnovers. Forward Isaac Fotu scored 13 points on 6-for-8 shooting, guard Brandon Spearman added 12 and freshman wing Aaron Valdes scored all of his 10 points in the first half.

A night after falling in the Diamond Head first round when Garrett Nevels’ desperation runner was off the mark, UH (8-3) got the better of this another back-and-forth affair. The Gaels were game to the end; there were 11 ties and five lead changes.

"Every play mattered tonight. Every single play mattered," UH coach Gib Arnold said. "It was a very fun locker room, and also very sobering in that I realized I think I got a pretty good team."

At the tourney postgame interview table, Spearman’s spirits were night and day — basically the length of time UH had to recover from the BSU loss.

"That was a rough 24 hours, man. Oh, how many hours, 13?" Spearman said with a laugh. "It was rough, man. I couldn’t go to sleep at night. I know a couple of us couldn’t go to sleep at night. But, finally we got a W, when it come down to it. Usually in in the past year we fold and teams come here and knock us down. But man, it feels good to be on the winning side this time. It’s about time."

Saint Mary’s (9-2) of the West Coast Conference lost for the second straight night after coming into the tournament as one of 10 undefeated teams in the country. The Gaels have won 25 games or more in each of the last six seasons, including in 2009-10 when they beat UH in the DHC third-place game.

Eran Ganot, a former three-year UH assistant coach under Bob Nash, was on the Gaels’ bench as a fourth-year assistant.

The Gaels were hampered by early foul trouble, allowing UH, led by Standhardinger, to go 22-for-29 at the line.

"Don’t even tease me with that question," Gaels coach Randy Bennett said when officiating was brought up.

"We got in so much foul trouble early, in that first half," he said. "And they played downsize (small ball). We didn’t do a very good job defensively, again. We’re really struggling there. But we couldn’t play much better offensively."

Indeed, SMC hit 10 of 21 3-pointers (47.6 percent) shot 53.1 percent overall and made its first 11 free throws before stumbling late at the line, making only three of eight in the second period.

UH converted 50 percent of its field-goal attempts and made a stand on the glass after the Gaels, behind Waldow, (17 points, nine rebounds) were dominating that facet 16-7 at halftime.

Valdes provided a huge first-half lift once UH bigs Fotu and Davis Rozitis went out with foul trouble. He played through a chipped bone in an elbow suffered against the Broncos and shot 3-for-4 in the first half in helping UH build a 43-39 halftime lead, along with just three team turnovers in the period.

"We don’t win that game without Aaron Valdes," Arnold said. "We were forced to go small because of foul trouble, and I thought that was a spark for us."

Spearman had an emphatic putback dunk of a missed layup by Valdes, but like much of the game, the Gaels had an immediate answer in an open, tying 3 by Levesque to make it 63-all. It went down to the wire from there.

Fotu spun baseline for a basket over Waldow at the end of the shot clock for a 74-72 lead with less than a minute to go. SMC called timeout and Levesque drove on Fotu for a tying basket and got the foul. But he missed, and Standhardinger (4-for-12 field goals) came through when it mattered.

It was the second time UH and SMC met in the Diamond Head Classic. UH guard Dwain Williams scored a tournament-record 36 points in a loss to the Gaels in the 2009 third-place game. Ganot was with UH’s staff at the time.