The clock is running down on the 2013-14 college basketball season, but there’s still a little time for teams to make a push going into March.
For Hawaii, that means shooting for an upset road victory at Long Beach State on Thursday. UH (19-8, 8-5 Big West) departed Tuesday afternoon for a rare one-game conference road trip in Los Angeles.
Beyond that, there are just two games next week (one road, one home) for the Rainbow Warriors to improve their fourth-place standing heading into the Big West Conference tournament March 13-15 in Anaheim, Calif.
UH lost its best chance at a regular-season title with a 60-56 overtime defeat at home to UC Irvine last Thursday, but kept slim odds alive with a nine-point victory over UC Davis on Saturday. A regular-season title guarantees at least an NIT berth.
"We only control 120 minutes of this season," UH coach Gib Arnold said. "We’ve got three games we can control. I really believe if we play our best ball, that when the standings (are finalized) at the end of the year, we could jump up a few. You look at how it works out, mathematically we could still win the whole thing. But we’re going to need some help. Those 120 minutes we do control, if we can do that, play our best ball, get some wins, then I think we will jump up in the standings."
Long Beach (12-14, 8-4) leads UH by a half-game while co-leaders UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine are up by two in the loss column at 9-3 apiece. At present, UH would not win a tiebreaker scenario against any of the three teams ahead of them, but that could change with wins in Long Beach on Thursday and in Santa Barbara next week.
A third- or fourth-place finish by the ‘Bows would likely mean a first-round meeting with either Cal State Northridge or Cal Poly in the Big West tourney. UH split the regular-season series 1-1, with both of those opponents.
If UH has something going for it, it’s that playing in California where two of the next three games are, as well as the tourney at the Honda Center in Anaheim is no longer an automatic roadblock. The ‘Bows swept their past two trips for a record four-game streak in conference road games and can attain an unprecedented fifth with a win at Long Beach State.
A victory there would also give UH its first 20-win season since 2003-04, when it made the NIT.
"I’m excited we’re about to reach (the) 20-win mark," senior center Davis Rozitis said. "That, I have never done in my collegiate career. And as far as I can remember, it hasn’t been done in Hawaii for a while, 10 or so years. I’m really excited about that. I guess, you know, mathematically we could still win the league, but I’m personally not thinking about it. I don’t think the guys on the team are thinking about it. We’re just playing loose and we’re a good road team. We have proven that this season."
In a normal two-game Thursday-Saturday road trip, Arnold’s strategy is to throw everything at the Thursday game and hope the rush of a victory will carry through to the Saturday contest.
Still, knowing there’s no back-end game on this trip could help the ‘Bows fight through fatigue a little more effectively.
"Either way, I think everybody’s mind-set is to go out there and win every game we play," point guard Quincy Smith said. "But I guess since we don’t have a game coming up this Saturday, everybody’s going to give 125 percent, give it that extra push."
