Rainbow Warriors seek to extend win streak

Hawaii has chased the success of its WAC championship basketball team of 2001-02, unsuccessfully, for more than a decade.

With each victory, Eran Ganot’s modern Rainbow Warriors move a step closer to running down history.

UH (14-2, 3-0 Big West) seeks to extend its perfect record in conference play in today’s contest at Cal State Fullerton (8-7, 1-1).

The program’s last 15-2 overall start to a season and 4-0 start to conference play came in that banner Savo-and-English season of 2001-02, when UH jumped out to 6-0 in the WAC as part of a 27-6 NCAA Tournament campaign with Predrag Savovic and Carl English.

Today’s Rainbows adjusted to some shifted personnel in an 80-71 win at UC Riverside on Thursday. It represented the program’s first win in a league road opener since 2011-12 at Fresno State. And it was just the second time that happened in the past 12 years.

Fullerton’s Titan Gym, like Riverside’s SRC Arena, is an intimate space. If the Rainbows can prevail there — likely again without leading scorer Aaron Valdes (turf toe) — they’ll have taken their first two conference road games of a season for the first time since 2003-04.

Point guard Roderick Bobbitt is expected to rejoin the starting lineup after playing 32 minutes off the bench at UCR.

UH, riding a six-game winning streak, enjoyed relatively short travel between the Southern California districts on Friday. Ganot was not available for a phone interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser from the road.

Today’s ESPN3-streamed 4 p.m. affair is not likely to come as easy as last season’s finale at Titan Gym, a 91-70 blowout for the ’Bows.

The Titans, the odd team out of the 2015 Big West tournament, have been remade into a catch-and-shoot outfit shooting 37 percent on 3s. Their current top four scorers were not active players last season.

“We’ve got some different types of players and some players that are suited for the way we want to play the game,” CSF coach Dedrique Taylor said. “We got off to a really good start (6-1) and now at this point in the year as people are trying to battle and stay healthy, we’re up against that monster right now. But when we’re healthy and sharing the basketball and playing the game the right way, I like our chances.”

Fullerton boasts a 20-point comeback win at UC Riverside in its Big West opener. Besides home court, the Titans have an advantage in getting UH in their only game of the week.

“Hopefully we can use that to our advantage,” Taylor said. “Hawaii having to travel as far as they did, having to play (Thursday), a pretty good game up and down the floor at Riverside. It’s going to be a tough matchup for us, just because of Hawaii’s size, their talent, their depth. They’re a very, very good basketball club and I think the most impressive thing to me when I watch Hawaii is just their willingness to share the basketball and make the open play.”

This has been UH’s most one-sided series since joining the Big West in 2012. The ’Bows have won all six Big West meetings to date and seven straight overall.

The last time Fullerton beat UH, guard Josh Akognon erupted for 41 points on Nov. 26, 2008, at the Stan Sheriff Center, a building record now shared by BYU’s Chase Fischer.

There’s something magical about Fullerton players and the number 41, apparently.

Air Force transfer Tre’ Coggins is coming off a 41-point outburst in an 85-75 home loss to CSUN last week, including a 17-for-17 effort at the foul line, a Big West record. It earned the junior his second Big West Player of the Week honor this season, tying Bobbitt for the league lead.

“He’s got a different level of maturity coming to us from the Air Force,” Taylor said. “He’s very rarely rattled in any situation. His play has obviously been stellar. … He’s a really good player that understands the nuances of the game and I think our style plays to his strength, which is being able to catch and shoot and utilize ball screens.

“He is unique to coach, in that you can say something one time and he’s got it and moved onto the next, where other guys it takes them 25,000 times.”

Coggins is up to 18.5 points per game on 41.0 percent 3-point shooting. Pepperdine transfer Malcolm Brooks, a one-and-done senior, and Khalil Ahmad, a true freshman, are the Titans’ secondary threats at 13.1 ppg apiece.

CSF has apparently suffered some attrition. There are just 11 players listed on the roster right now, and last year’s leading scorer Lanerryl Johnson is not listed after averaging 9.5 points in the first 10 games of the Titans’ season.