Technical difficulties plagued the local radio broadcast of the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors basketball game Friday morning on KKEA, 1420-AM.

The station had tapped in to the Integrated Services for Digital Network broadcast facilities at the arena, as is common practice. The so-called ISDN lines are intended to provide superior broadcast quality audio, “but we think the ISDN lines in the arena got overloaded, so (the system) kept failing,” said Mike Kelly, station president and general manager.

During the failures the station switched to the Westwood One broadcast of the game, meaning fans still could hear the game, but without local commentary from KKEA morning man Bobby Curran and announcer and attorney Jeffrey Portnoy.

Technical difficulties also affected the beginning of the postgame show, but issues were straightened out in time for fans to call in for the program.

“We took care of it for Sunday’s game,” Kelly said, saying arrangements were being made for a different phone line. “We also brought in another engineer in Spokane (Wash.) who actually is familiar with all those lines,” and they will be tested again before Sunday, Kelly said.

In the game, UH upset the California Golden Bears 77-66 to advance to the second round of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament for the first time in school history.