Some slept right through it. Others arose in a panic, scrambling for shelter.
The Hawaii basketball team’s experiences of the now-infamous ballistic missile false alarm on Saturday ran the gamut. While the Rainbow Warriors were unified that night in defeating UC Santa Barbara 77-76, it still seemed surreal to some players following team practice Tuesday.
Guard Brocke Stepteau called the whole situation a “wake-up call” — but one he slept through.
“Usually on a Saturday game, I’m trying to sleep until 11, because we don’t have shootaround until early afternoon,” Stepteau said. “My routine was pretty much just to sleep as late as possible.”
He woke to some horns or sirens through closed windows at his apartment on Punahou Street around the time an erroneous cell phone alert went out shortly after 8 a.m.
“I go back to sleep, don’t even look at my phone,” Stepteau said. “Then I wake up a couple hours later, to 45 or 50 texts from people back home (in Texas). Just checking, ‘Oh my gosh, are you OK?’ I still don’t know what’s going on at that point, I don’t know why these people are checking in on me. And then I scroll through and see the alert after the fact.”
For freshman wings Samuta Avea and Justin Hemsley, roommates at the Hale Lokelani dormitory, things got real, really fast.
“My neighbor Akil (Francisco) … he’s a football player. He was pounding on my door,” Avea said. “He woke me up like, ‘We’re about to get bombed!’ He’s screaming. I’m like, ‘Shut up.’ I didn’t believe him. He says, ‘Check your phone.’ So I check my phone, and I’m just like, I’m in panic mode.
“I had got a flat tire the night before, so I can’t drive out to my parents (on the North Shore). I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’ So I start putting clothes in my bag and stuff. I go down to the first floor, and I’m like ‘Man, I gotta wake everybody up.’ So I pull the fire alarm. Everybody’s going out now. We all walk to this bomb shelter, everybody’s running.”
Avea called loved ones — Hemsley didn’t want to alarm his mother back in California on her birthday — and they headed across Dole Street to the art building at the middle of the Manoa campus, where they eventually got the all-clear.
Both Yahoo Sports and NCAA.com featured stories on UCSB’s harrowing morning seeking shelter in bathrooms and the basement of their Courtyard by Marriott in Waikiki.
“There was major panic,” UCSB coach Joe Pasternack told NCAA.com’s Andy Katz.
Meanwhile, some Rainbow Warriors — like Stepteau and guard Sheriff Drammeh — remained blissfully unaware.
“Slept right through it. Did not hear a word. Not a thing,” Drammeh said.
For UH, at least, there was a semblance of normality by the team shootaround at 2:45 p.m. Everyone was accounted for by late morning when coach Eran Ganot sent out a group message.
“It was weird,” Avea said. “You keep thinking about how you went from preparing to die, to having to totally focus in on this game and the scout that the coaches prepared for us. But, I mean, we tried to flush that as quickly as possible.”
During the game — which followed Rainbow Wahine basketball’s 74-66 win over Long Beach State — there was a palpable sense of relief in the Stan Sheriff Center.
“You go to the game and you’re talking about it with the other staff and the officials, ‘We’re so happy to be here,’ ” Ganot said. “I think both teams played with maximum effort. They played their tails off. It was electric in the arena. I heard someone say on ‘Call the Coach’ (radio show) yesterday, he was so excited to just get back in the arena, (see) the team.
“It’s something that’s probably in the back of your mind the rest of your life, that it was a day that, I think, you won’t really forget, but then now you’re slowly working your way back.”
UH (12-5, 3-1 Big West) takes a three-game winning streak into Saturday’s 7 p.m. contest against UC Davis (11-6, 2-1) at the Stan Sheriff Center.
Stepteau monitoring injured finger
Stepteau jammed the middle finger on his right (shooting) hand on the court going for a steal in the second half against UCSB. He received treatment for a dislocated joint and returned to the game with a splint. He sat out of contact during Tuesday’s practice.
“I have a fracture on my shooting hand right now,” said Stepteau, UH’s fourth-leading scorer at 9.9 per game. “Waiting to hear from the doctor how serious it is. Hopefully it’s not too serious and Jay (athletic trainer Goo) is pretty optimistic I’ll be able to get back real soon, probably even for the game on Saturday. I just gotta see how it feels.”
