Better competition would do the Rainbows some good

Is it too early to begin working on a New Year’s resolution?

If not, here’s one to be pondered: No more Arkansas-Pine Bluff on future University of Hawaii men’s basketball schedules.

Please.

Especially not after the Rainbow Warriors made easy work of the almost annual sacrificial Golden Lions Wednesday night, 75-47.

What wasn’t easy was figuring out what the ’Bows gained from their third lopsided victory over UAPB in four years.

It sure wasn’t a midweek box office draw, with 3,175 finding their way into the Stan Sheriff Center, even if they have become an all-too familiar face on the early-season schedule.

If you are counting, UH has won four meetings against the Golden Lions in six years by an average of 25 points.

And while it undoubtedly looks good on the win/loss ledger — where UH is 5-1 now — it does little to prepare the ’Bows for their ultimate goal, winning the Big West Conference and gaining an invitation to the NCAA Tournament that goes with it. Or, failing that, earning a National Invitation Tournament bid.

For a team like UH, with many of the key pieces back from a 22-13 season, there is both an appetite and a need for better competition. What would be a disservice is a false sense of security.

The ’Bows are having trouble hitting their outside shot against a zone and playing teams like UAPB (2-6), which they can beat handily with little more than defense and free-throw shooting, isn’t forcing them to get any better at it anytime soon.

UAPB, aka Team Airball with at least eight of them in casting off for 66 shots for just 47 points, wasn’t going to put any pressure on UH. Certainly nothing like what UH will face in conference, which is barely a month away.

The only drama in this one was whether UH would go through the night without hitting a 3-pointer of its own. For a while new football coach Nick Rolovich, who cast a couple of 3-point attempts at halftime, came as close as anyone. Ultimately the answer, after 10 misses, thanks to Isaac Fleming’s rainmaker with 3 minutes 47 seconds remaining, was “no.”

You could, perhaps, say the game was a confidence builder after the loss at Texas Tech Saturday, but with Division II members UH-Hilo and Hawaii Pacific the next two teams up on the schedule, how much stroking to the ’Bows require?

Fact is UAPB found its way onto the schedule in the Gib Arnold reign as a widely circulated rent-a-foe — motto: “no time zone is too far and no paycheck too big” and nobody has been willing to scratch them off. Which is why the much-in-demand Golden Lions are at the halfway point of 18 consecutive road games, which attests to their pliability.

Let’s be clear here, nobody is saying UH can’t peruse the pastry menu once in a while in the preseason. And they have with Montana State, Nicholls State already plus Mississippi Valley State and Howard coming up. UH need not play a Murderer’s Row-like conference foe Long Beach State, which walks a gauntlet that includes Duke, UCLA, Arizona, San Diego State, Virginia, Oklahoma State and Brigham Young.

For UH, UAPB is a crutch that is no longer needed.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.