IRVINE, Calif. >> After travelling 2,580 miles to the PacWest Conference’s basketball tournament, Chaminade discovered that the road to the NCAA Division II playoffs will go through Honolulu.
The Silverswords will face top-seeded Hawaii Pacific in the men’s semifinals today after rallying for a 69-65 victory over Azusa Pacific in Thursday night’s first round at Concordia University.
HPU also advanced to the women’s semifinals with a 74-56 win over Dominican on Thursday. The third-seeded Sharks will face second-seeded Point Loma Nazarene today.
Fourth-seeded Chaminade (18-10) will face a semifinal opponent that not only leads the PacWest in both points scored (87.0 per game) and fewest points allowed (67.1 per game), but also is ranked sixth nationally. HPU (26-2) won its first regular-season conference championship and received a bye into the semifinals.
“They’ve got three really good guards who are really hard to guard, and they’ve got a good set of role players,” Chaminade coach Eric Bovaird said. “It’ll be a battle.”
That battle will come 24 hours after a intense fight against fifth-seeded Azusa Pacific (16-15). The ’Swords overcame a nine-point deficit in the first half to build a 12-point lead, then needed pivotal plays from Sam Daly to repel the Cougars in the final 30 seconds.
Daly, who had two points in the first half as Chaminade trailed 35-32, scored eight during a 15-2 blitz that turned a 40-34 deficit into a 49-42 lead with 13:37 to play. Chaminade forced four turnovers in the first five minutes of the second half, converted all of them into points, and held APU to just two free throws in a span of 5:18.
“We had a sense of urgency,” ’Swords guard Austin Pope said. “We knew what was on the line, and we just tried to buckle down and get to it. At the end of the day, it’s a pride thing. You just don’t let anybody score on you.”
The ’Swords expanded their lead to 57-45 with 7:56 remaining, but APU’s Connor Peterson scored 11 of his game-high 25 points in a span of 2:37, as the Cougars drew within 67-65 with 57.1 seconds to play.
Then Daly made his biggest contributions.
As he was driving the lane, the Australian guard put his shoulder into a defender before backing away and making a fadeaway jump shot that gave Chaminade a four-point lead with 31 seconds remaining.
“It was kind of a broken play,” Daly said. “We didn’t get to the action we wanted. But it was late and I saw a lane, and I just used my strength to stay grounded. Once I got up in the air, he wasn’t there with me, so I just put it in.”
Then with three seconds left, Daly dived on the floor to secure the rebound of Corey Langerveld’s missed 3-point shot, and quickly passed to Pope while still prone.
“We’ve been battle-tested all season,” Pope said. “We’ve been down before, but we have a good group of guys who get after it. We love each other and we’d go through a wall for anybody.”
Daly and Kiran Shastri led the ’Swords with 14 points apiece. Rohndell Goodwin added 11 points, while Pope finished with nine points and 12 rebounds. Petar Kutlesic contributed 15 points, 14 rebounds and two blocks for the Cougars.
WOMEN’S TOURNAMENT
>> Hawaii Pacific 74, Dominican 56
VeAnne Navarro scored 14 points to lead the Sharks (21-5) to their third successive win and eighth in the past nine games. Gabriella Fotu added 13 points, Jessi Reeves scored 11 points and Spencer Gray grabbed 13 rebounds for HPU.
Sandra Ikekora had game highs of 34 points and 17 rebounds for sixth-seeded Dominican (16-12).
