LAHAINA >> Rick Barnes was going to be the first to three no matter what on Wednesday.
Either his Tennessee Volunteers would make him the first coach to get wins in the Maui Jim Maui Invitational with three different schools, or he’d be the first coach to lose three games to Chaminade on the Valley Isle.
For Barnes, it was the good three.
The more athletic Vols asserted themselves early and maintained a double-digit lead most of the second half, then finished off the Division II Silverswords 95-81 in the seventh-place game Wednesday at Lahaina Civic Center.
Barnes, the Volunteers’ second-year coach and a 600-game career winner, candidly talked at the postgame podium about trying (unsuccessfully) to get out of the Maui tournament when he took over in Knoxville, knowing he’d be bringing in a very young team.
And young teams have a way of falling victim to Chaminade, which is 7-90 all-time in the tourney.
As fortunes would have it, Barnes met up with the Silverswords for the fourth time in his fifth Maui appearance as a head coach. His 1991 Providence team lost to the ’Swords 111-108; he beat them by 22 in 2004 with Texas; avoided them in the 2008 edition; then watched Chaminade top his Longhorns 86-73 in the 2012 first round. That was Chaminade’s most recent win on the Valley Isle.
Barnes mentioned his two losses to Chaminade and said the difference this time was his team’s mental toughness. Guard Robert Hubbs III scored 28 points, including a nasty dunk late over 7-foot-1 Nate Pollard, and had four steals.
“I think it gets down to players understanding that you respect every opponent,” Barnes said.
“The message to our team today was, ‘People will say Chaminade has nothing to lose,’ ” he continued, “and that’s not true because they’ve got a terrific coach, a terrific group of players, and they want to win. And so we told our guys they’ve got just as much to lose as we do and you can expect to fight. And I thought for a young group of guys, they came out and had great respect for the opponent and worked hard and it really is a good win for us.”
It might have been Chaminade’s best chance to score a win in its signature tournament for the foreseeable future. The ’Swords brought a group with exceptional experience this time and will have four new starters in 2017. Starting in 2018 they will miss the tournament in alternating years to play mainland games at powerhouse D-I teams, a change recently announced by tournament runner KemperLesnik.
“I think for us to have a really good chance to win, we do have to have some guys with a lot of experience,” Silverswords coach Eric Bovaird said. “And that’s where we can catch people off guard and close the gap between five star recruits and senior Division II players. So our guys believed and I believed … that we had a chance to pull off at least one victory.”
Chaminade (2-3) lost 104-61 to No. 4 North Carolina in the first round, then took Connecticut to the wire before losing 93-82 on Tuesday. They hung around for most of Wednesday but never could string together a big run. Austin Pope hit a corner 3 to cut it to nine with under five minutes to play, but it got no closer.
“It was there. We believed that we could get a win,” said senior guard Rohndell Goodwin, who posted team highs of 22 points and eight rebounds. “No doubt North Carolina, you know, we knew we had to fight hard, we knew that they had bigs, but we looked at the other matchups … we felt we had a chance.”
The 3-point happy Silverswords hit nine from deep in 25 attempts, below what they’d need to seriously threaten a power conference team like the SEC’s Volunteers (2-3).
Seniors Goodwin, Kiran Shastri, Kuany Kuany and Sam Daly now turn their focus to PacWest play. Chaminade hasn’t been to the NCAA II tournament since 2014.
Goodwin’s 60 points for the tournament were the Silverswords’ most since De’Andre Haskins poured in 73 in 2012 — including the win over Barnes’ team.
UConn takes a tough loss
Besides falling 79-69 to No. 13 Oregon in the fifth-place game, Connecticut learned of another loss Wednesday.
Second-leading scorer Terry Larrier (13.5 ppg), a sophomore forward who transferred from VCU, was ruled out for the rest of the season with the knee injury he suffered in Monday’s Maui-opening defeat to Oklahoma State. It was revealed Wednesday as a torn ACL.
This Maui tournament was in stark contrast for the Huskies than their previous appearance in 2010, when Kemba Walker lit up the field en route to the tourney title and an eventual national championship.
