UC Irvine put Hawaii in the full Nelson.
Anteaters guard Luke Nelson scored 29 points, the most by a Rainbow Warriors opponent this season, and Irvine separated itself from the upstart ’Bows in the Big West standings with a 72-58 road win on Saturday night.
A Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 5,781 tried to coax a comeback out of its team but UH (12-12, 6-5 BWC) could not muster the buckets to draw within single digits of second-place UCI (15-12, 8-3) after giving up a massive first-half run. That was despite Gibson Johnson scoring 15 of his career-high tying 19 points after the break when UH shot 56 percent.
Nelson had a lot to do with it. In 28 minutes, the senior tied his career high with six 3-pointers and shot 10-for-19 from the field overall, even after a series of heat-check misses down the stretch.
Fresh in his mind was not Irvine’s 28-point win over UH at the Bren Events Center on Jan. 7, but Irvine’s 22-point defeat at the Sheriff last year.
“This has a little bit of added zest for me because they played extremely well last year and the games where my team doesn’t play well stick with me, so I kind of use that as motivation,” Nelson said. “My main motivation was to get this team back on track.”
He bumped UH off it in the process. The ’Bows saw their four-game winning streak snapped as they dropped back into a fourth-place tie with Long Beach State with five games to play, including the next two on the road.
UH needed to play close to a perfect game to beat a bigger, deeper, more experienced team like UCI.
It didn’t.
UCI turned to its titanic size to dominate the backboards, 39-22, and its superior depth to win the battle of reserves 22-0. UH missed guard Leland Green for a third straight game due to a nebulous illness.
The best defensive team in the conference put the clamps on after UH’s 14-4 start and limited Noah Allen (18 points) from going off as he has over the past few weeks.
The best free-throw shooting team in the conference clamped itself from 15 feet, shooting 6-for-12 to UCI’s 14-for-14. That, and some missed layups, had an adverse mental effect, UH coach Eran Ganot said.
“We started to play late shot clock … became a little bit 3-point happy,” he said.
Last month, UC Irvine unleashed a massive 26-4 first-half run to dismiss a strong Hawaii start. Once UCI started switching up to a zone defense, the ’Bows became afflicted with some cross-Pacific deja vu.
Here, it was 31-6, staking Irvine to a 15-point halftime advantage.
“It kind of was that (same) feel,” Johnson said. “We got a good start and couldn’t get anything going after that. … (But) we won that second half and fought back.”
Because of injuries, it was only Nelson’s ninth game of the season.
“The big things in the first half was our lack of composure when things weren’t going well,” Ganot said. “The second-biggest thing was Nelson.
“There’s some things we could’ve done better to slow down his attack. We wanted to tag him, to show on those ball screens and we got neither.”
Nelson stuck a step-back 3-pointer to make it 32-18, then after Johnson scored inside, Nelson dribbled into a deep 3 to cap the impressive half for the visitors.
“That won the game for us. We kept them at bay after that,” Nelson said.
Said UCI coach Russell Turner: “I though it was more of a team offensive performance the first time. This game it was Luke Nelson going crazy. But he’s able to do that and part of the reason he’s able to do (that) is it’s hard for teams to load up against him with the other threats we have on the floor.”
Purchase and Allen hit 3s to start the second half, sandwiched around a Ioannis Dimakopoulos three-point play, to get UH within 12. Nelson responded with his fourth 3 in six attempts, a bullet from the corner.
Nelson drive through the lane for a scoop layup. On the next trip down, he hit from deep in rhythm to give UCI a 53-36 lead.
Allen’s three-point play with 11:08 remaining cut it to 16. Nelson’s answer? An elbow J, and-1.
“He’s tough to guard because he’s a threat in so many ways,” Johnson said. “He can pass, he can shoot, he can attack the rim. Really impressive player.”
Johnson tried to spark his team on his 25th birthday, scoring inside, blocking center Dimakoupolos (11 points) on one play. Johnson stuck a hook over Dimakopoulos to make it 62-51, but the UCI center answered with one his own.
Guard Sheriff Drammeh contributed 12 points and career-best five steals in the loss.
