UH experiences ups and downs

It became the ultimate good news-bad news day for the Hawaii men’s basketball team.

UH junior forward Joston Thomas was announced as the Western Athletic Conference Player of the Week on Monday morning, but the evening was met with an announcement by coach Gib Arnold that sophomore forward Trevor Wiseman was suspended indefinitely from team activities.

It was not immediately clear when or if Wiseman will return to the team. He was not at Monday’s practice.

The 6-foot-7 Wiseman, dubbed the team’s "hustle king," started the first 14 games of the season, but saw his role increasingly dwindle. He is averaging 6.4 points and 5.4 rebounds in 23.4 minutes per game, but his numbers are well below that in Western Athletic Conference play.

As important as the 83-81 overtime road win at San Jose State was on Saturday — a game in which Thomas put in a career-high 29 points with 12 rebounds — it came with a big caveat for third-place UH (13-9, 5-3 WAC). According to sources close to the situation, Wiseman refused to re-enter the game after a brief first-half stint of playing time, drawing the SJSU crowd’s attention to the UH bench. Wiseman did not play the rest of the way.

Arnold declined comment beyond the following statement issued by UH: "I believe it is a privilege to be a student-athlete and to represent the University of Hawaii. With this privilege comes great responsibility to be a good teammate and to act appropriately both on and off the court. When these responsibilities are not met then the privilege of representing UH will be temporarily or permanently revoked. At this time we have asked Trevor to only concentrate on being a student and he has been released from all team responsibilities."

Wiseman was seen at the UH athletic complex soon after practice and asked of his thoughts on the situation.

"I’m cool with it," Wiseman said.

Would he be talking to Arnold about it?

"Not today. Later," he replied.

One reason Wiseman’s role has diminished in the WAC has been the stellar play at power forward of the 6-foot-7 Thomas. After the SJSU win, Thomas moved into first in the league in scoring in WAC games at 19.0 points per game and fifth in rebounding at 7.9 rpg. He shot 12-for-16 against SJSU — setting a career high against the Spartans for the second time this season — and had 11 points during a key 16-0 UH run in the second half.

"I think it was a team award," Thomas said of his first career WAC weekly honor. "For some reason the award goes to one person because it foreshadows the things that the rest of the teammates do. I felt it, and I’m prideful for it, very thankful, because I got it by doing something that I feel like I’ve been put here to do: play basketball, and have fun doing it. I feel good about it, thank you."

As for Wiseman, Thomas said: "I don’t know nothing about that. … I’m a basketball player. I’m just on the team, I don’t know everything about the team."

Thomas became the third UH player to become Player of the Week this season, after guard Zane Johnson and center Vander Joaquim (twice). It was the first season since 2001-02 in which three different ‘Bows received the weekly honor (Predrag Savovic, Carl English and Mike McIntyre).

While Arnold declined to comment on Wiseman’s future with the team, he glowed about the recent effort of Thomas.

"He was great down the stretch," Arnold said. "What I like about it is it was all power moves. It was and-1s, playing through traffic and playing through hits and double teams. That’s where he’s real effective, and I just thought that he was just unguardable at times down there on that block. Just playing like a true power forward."

UH continues WAC play on Thursday in a "Black-Out" game against Nevada at the Stan Sheriff Center.