If Friday night’s season opener against Southern Illinois-Edwardsville showed Hawaii anything, it was that little will come easy in this NCAA-sanctioned basketball season.
The Cougars stunned the heavily rebuilt Rainbow Warriors 69-68 when UH could not get a shot off after inbounding the ball with 4.3 seconds left on its home court. It snapped a UH streak of seven wins in season openers.
Graduate transfer Noah Allen poured in 21 points in his official UH debut, easily besting his career high of six in three seasons at UCLA. His timely buckets in the second half keyed the Rainbows’ comeback effort from down 11 points. But he was errant on a go-ahead 3 on the final possession. The ball went out of bounds back to UH for a final look.
Point guard Sheriff Drammeh, who scored a career-best 17 points, inbounded. He got the ball back near the baseline and tried to cut across the lane. But the Cougars stripped the ball loose and the buzzer sounded. UH went scoreless the last 2:10.
UH, with 10 newcomers, has little time to dwell on it. Sunday’s 5 p.m. opponent in the Rainbow Classic, Texas State of the Sun Belt, beat Florida Atlantic 61-57 at ‘Iolani in the first game of the round-robin tournament.
A crowd of 2,990 appeared for Friday’s late, 9 p.m. tip-off time.
The teams played on an imported hardwood court brought in for the Armed Forces Classic, with the “H” at center court hidden and “Pearl Harbor” emblazoned on the baselines.
UH, which is under an NCAA postseason ban and playing with reduced scholarships, debuted an entirely new starting five for the first time in 40 years. It got a boost in the first half from freshman center Ido Flaisher, who scored nine in the period and 13 for the game.
The Cougars of the Ohio Valley Conference went 6-22 last year. But they showed resolve on the road and got a team-high 13 points off the bench from Kansas State transfer Tre Harris.
“A tremendous effort from our guys,” SIUE coach Jon Harris said. “We got a really young team and we responded to some adversity tonight. We got down 12 … found a way to close the gap. Second half, we didn’t feel like the whistle was going our way, but the guys never folded. The guys grew up a lot tonight.”
Brandon Jackson posted up for a 44-42 lead four minutes into the second half. Burak Eslik hit consecutive 3s for a 50-44 lead.
Eslik got fouled on a corner 3 attempt with 12:44 left, hitting one of three at the stripe to run the deficit to seven. Flaisher took a feed inside from Drammeh to end the run, for the moment.
Keenan Simmons flushed the ball on a third effort, and Christian Ellis converted two foul shots to extend to an 11-point lead with a 13-2 run over a six-minute stretch.
Allen hit on a couple of drives as UH tried to battle back. Then he converted a difficult three-point play, cutting it to three with 6:29 left.
Drammeh followed with a couple of free throws and Allen stuck a putback for UH’s first lead since the start of the half at 62-61.
Allen tied it up again at 64 on a spin move, and Drammeh knotted it one more time at 68 on a drive. Carlos Anderson scored the go-ahead point on a free throw with 1:19 left.
SIUE worked the ball inside and rallied from a 12-point hole to tie it up at 36 late in the first half as UH failed to score for 41⁄2 minutes. Allen banked in a shot to beat the halftime buzzer for a two-point lead.
