SAN FRANCISCO » Diane Moore took the ball way out top and looked at the basket. There were still 11 seconds left on the shot clock, but the Hawaii offense was struggling, so she heaved the 24-footer up to the basket.
Clang!
The ball kicked off to San Francisco’s Alicia Scafidi for the rebound.
That moment summed up a 6 minute, 36 second stretch of the first half on Friday as the Wahine went scoreless. That, predictably, led to a 65-52 loss to San Francisco in the season opener. Hawaii missed nine shots and turned the ball over six times during the drought and a 13-5 Wahine lead became a 19-13 deficit.
Hawaii finished with 21 turnovers and shot 31 percent (15-for-48) for the night.
"We’re dealing with some guard issues, and until we get our guard problems under control, it’s going to be sloppy basketball," said Laura Beeman, after her first game as Wahine coach. "We don’t have a lot of leadership right now. We expected some of the turnovers and some of the quick shots. We can fix the execution part. Nineteen-for-34 from the free-throw line hurt."
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that.
Hawaii got off to a strong start, jumping out to a 13-5 lead in the opening minutes. The Dons were coming off of a 5-25 season and seemed ripe for the picking. Then, the bottom fell out. USF didn’t exactly blow the game open. But when Scafidi hit a 3-pointer with 8:26 to go in the half, it gave the Dons a 16-13 lead. They never relinquished it.
"I think we got a great start on defense," said Wahine forward Kamilah Martin, who played her high school ball in San Francisco. "That’s where we got our offense from. Once our defense started to slip, our offense wasn’t going well either, so it was kind of bad offense and bad defense. We have to clean that up in practice."
Martin, who led Hawaii with 13.2 points per game last season, was the focus of the San Francisco defense and was held scoreless in the first half. She finished with eight points but managed to pull down a game-high 15 rebounds.
"I think that was what San Francisco’s game plan was — don’t let her get going, and they didn’t," Beeman said. "They put two and three people on her and the one thing that she did is she continued to rebound. That’s frustrating when you’re not getting touches and when you do get touches, you can’t do anything with the ball. And when you do kick it out, people aren’t hitting shots. So the fact that she continued to work hard, the fact that she got boards, I’m proud of her for that."
The Wahine managed to stay in the game thanks to some solid defense. The Dons turned the ball over 20 times themselves. Twice in the final minutes, Hawaii cut the deficit to five, but could get no closer.
Moore, Destiny King and Monica DeAngelis led the Wahine with 10 points each. Mel Khlok had a game-high 17 for the Dons.
