A revolution of roles worked once for the Hawaii men’s basketball team. Can a fresh approach prevail again?

With an eye toward approaching Big West Conference play, UH coach Gib Arnold started three freshmen in the Rainbow Warriors’ 84-61 win over East Tennessee State in Sunday’s consolation semifinal in the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic.

There’s a strong chance of a repeat approach in today’s 11:30 a.m. contest for the DHC consolation championship against Ole Miss of the Southeastern Conference.

The woeful ETSU Buccaneers were short in talent, height and able bodies. The Rebels (9-2) present an entirely different challenge; their athletic roster and well-defined roles have led to 82.2 points per game, the seventh-best mark in the country, and 38.1 percent field-goal defense, eighth-best.

UH (6-4) will have its work cut out when seeking a third straight 2-1 finish in the fourth-year holiday tournament. The ‘Bows kept their Christmas Eve practice brief to keep their energy high.

"Guys went hard, but kept it real short," Arnold said. "You want to keep stuff short this time of year, especially two games in a row and a short turnaround again."

Freshmen Manroop Clair and Brandon Jawato emerged as a new starting backcourt in the ETSU game, joining frosh forward Isaac Fotu and older bigs Vander Joaquim and Christian Standhardinger. Senior captains Jace Tavita and Hauns Brereton, the previous starters, played minimal minutes.

Clair responded with his best game as a ‘Bow with 15 points and five assists in 30 minutes, while Jawato hustled for four steals and three assists to help offset a 1-for-9 shooting night.

"Oh man, it was a great confidence booster," Jawato said. "We’re going to go into this Ole Miss game with positive thoughts. … This tournament has given me a lot of confidence to understand the college game at a better pace. It’s really helped me out on both sides of the floor."

Said Clair: "It feels great that Coach is trusting us. … I think it’s going to be a great game, to be honest. We just gotta play hard on defense, execute on offense."

Arnold said after the ETSU win that he’s now trying to build up depth, particularly in his freshmen, toward peaking in the Big West tournament in March.

Clair and Jawato reprised their new roles in Monday’s brief walkthrough in preparation for the Rebels. Fotu, who is averaging 9.2 points and 7.8 rebounds, previously supplanted Brandon Spearman in the starting group.

"It’s the most important thing of the year, is getting (through) that conference tournament," Arnold said Monday.

"We were able to play all the freshmen, and I think it’s important that we try to do that again to get them ready for the Big West, which is right around the corner (Saturday at home vs. Cal State Northridge)."

UH will look for a second straight strong post performance. It nearly got three double-doubles out of big men Joaquim (23 points, nine rebounds), Standhardinger (18 points, 12 boards) and Fotu (14 points, 14 boards, five assists) on Sunday.

This time, though, the ‘Bows (rated 10th nationally in rebounds at 42.4) are going up against a team versed in cleaning the glass. Ole Miss is 12th at 42.3, though coach Andy Kennedy said UH is the biggest team he’s seen this year.

"We’ve gotta be prepared to somehow get off this island 2-1," Kennedy said.

He took his team to the Arizona Memorial on Monday, a day they used "to exhale."

Ole Miss lost its DHC opener to Indiana State in overtime, but the Rebels came back from 13 points down in its consolation semifinal against San Francisco and won 85-78.

"(USF) was a gut-check game for us early in the season and I think it showed the quality I was looking for out of a number of different guys," Kennedy said. "One of my jobs is to make sure we have role definition. Our problem is we’ve just got to do our jobs better, whether it’s shot selection or defensive efficiency."

This is Ole Miss’ first time participating in a UH tournament. Its only previous trip Hawaii was in 2000 for the Yahoo! Sports Invitational at BYU-Hawaii.