Cal Poly thumps UH

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. » The possibility of another controversial buzzer-beater was out of the question early.

By the end of Thursday night’s lopsided loss at Cal Poly, the more relevant proposition was whether the Hawaii men’s basketball team would suffer the biggest blowout in the Gib Arnold era.

As it turned out, the 88-59 defeat was just the worst of the season, nearly twice the deficit the Warriors had in their next biggest losses, 15-point December setbacks to Miami and Ole Miss.

Hawaii (10-9, 4-4 Big West) was outrebounded 38-21 and gave up 23 second-chance points despite its front line holding a distinct height advantage over a Cal Poly starting lineup with just one player taller than 6-foot-6.

"It was all about effort," said freshman forward Isac Fotu, who tied for the team high with 14 points. "We’re bigger, they said we’re more athletic than them, so there’s no reason they should get any more rebounds than us. It all came down to effort the whole game. That’s why we lost by so much.

"Effort to box out their guys. That’s why they had so many offensive rebounds. You could blame that we missed a lot of shots, but at the end of the day, they shouldn’t have gotten so many offensive rebounds. They got too many second chances."

Cal Poly junior forward Chris Eversley had a game-high 19 points, and freshman center Brian Bennett had a career-high 17. Each Mustangs big man had four offensive rebounds, and Cal Poly (8-9, 4-3 Big West) had a 14-9 advantage on the offensive boards.

Christian Standhardinger also scored 14 points for the Warriors. But the team’s leading scorer with 14.7 points per game coming in, Standhardinger was just 0-for-1 with no points in the first half, after which the Mustangs led 38-26.

Cal Poly jumped out to a 14-4 lead in the first seven minutes of the game. Hawaii got the deficit down to five on a 3-pointer by Brandon Jawato at the 11:56 mark, but when the Mustangs got back up to double digits on a Reese Morgan 3 just four minutes later, the Warriors were never able to cut back into the lead.

Hawaii center Vander Joaquim, averaging 14.5 points and 8.7 rebounds a game, was limited to just two points and one rebound on 1-for-4 shooting and just 12 minutes on the floor.

Joaquim played three minutes in the second half after picking up three first-half fouls.

"He was getting beat," Arnold said, "and he had three fouls in the first half, so we kept him out. But his guy was getting a lot of those offensive rebounds, and when we put him back in that continued to happen, so we went with another guy."

The blowout was nothing like the Warriors’ previous game in Mott Gym, a 54-53 last-second loss in Arnold’s first road game in 2010. The film showed that Chris O’Brien’s game-winning putback might not have left his hand before the light went off on the backboard, but in-game replay was not available at the time.

Thursday’s whipping — UH’s third straight loss to Cal Poly — had nowhere near the same type of drama, and to Arnold, it started with rebounding, an area where Hawaii typically holds the advantage.

"We’ve done that all year," Arnold said. "We’ve played bigger teams and more athletic teams, and we still outrebound them. It’s been one of our strengths, but it left us tonight. It looked like they were a step quicker to the ball, and they played a lot more physical than us."

With 12 points, Jawato was the only other Warriors player in double figures. He was 3-for-7 from 3-point range, but the rest of the team combined to shoot 4-for-13 from deep.

Cal Poly, on the other hand, hoisted a season-high 25 3-pointers, hitting 11.

Mustangs head coach Joe Callero said the strategy was to move the ball continuously, forcing the Warriors to tire after their lengthy trip from the islands.

"We caught them at a great time," Callero said. "It’s a tired team. You could see the fatigue that they had in their legs and their eyes and their body.

"Our point was to be aggressive and to chase down offensive boards and to make them have to defend and move the ball and try to take their legs out of them, and I think we proved we were the fresher team tonight."

And this is just the first of a four-game road swing for Hawaii. The Warriors play at UC Santa Barbara on Saturday before making trips to UC Riverside and Cal State Fullerton next week.

After starting 3-0 in its first season in the Big West, Hawaii is back down to .500. For a team that was picked to finish in the top half of the conference in the preseason media poll, it’s time to refocus.

"It’s embarrassing, that loss, how much it was," Fotu said. "It’s about how much we bounce back and get out of the slump we’re in. We need to show how much losing like this bothers us and come back Saturday and get a win."