While the University of Hawaii is required to pay the airfare for visiting Big West Conference opponents, this week the Rainbow Warriors basketball team can consider it money particularly well spent for what it brings them.
Which is a 24-karat opportunity to get back in the thick of the conference race.
Amid the struggles of a three-game losing streak, their longest regular-season slump in a calendar year, the ’Bows tonight draw the last-place team in the nine-member conference, UC Riverside, which is winless in eight Big West games and 5-17 overall.
Saturday serves up eighth-place Cal State Northridge, which is 2-7 in conference and 5-18 overall.
They entered the week as the No. 321 and 345 (out of 351) Division I teams in Rating Percentage Index, an NCAA power metric.
For that UH might provide limousines from the airport to assure prompt delivery.
Not since they faced Howard after a Diamond Head Classic loss to Princeton have the ’Bows been presented with a better bounce-back opportunity.
As the ’Bows (13-8, 4-4 BWC) open the second half of conference play 21⁄2 games behind front-running UC Santa Barbara (18-5, 7-2) and UC Davis (16-7, 7-2), there is no stretch on the schedule that provides a better opportunity to move up from .500 in the standings.
Especially since four of the six games remaining on the conference schedule after this week will be on the road.
Just two seasons ago UC Riverside was thorn in UH’s side, inflicting one of only three losses the ’Bows suffered at home in their march to the NCAA Tournament and a 28-6 finish. It was the game remembered for actions that earned Roderick Bobbitt a reprimand from the conference.
But the Highlanders have fallen on hard times even for a program that has managed but one winning season in 14 previous seasons of Division I play.
Three days before the conference opener athletic director, Tamica Smith Jones abruptly fired Dennis Cutts in the parking lot after returning from the final nonconference road trip, leaving assistant Justin Bell to pick up the pieces.
Smith cited the decision being “in the best interest of our student athletes’ overall experience and the basketball program’s competitive progress.”
A preseason pick to finish eighth in the Big West, the Highlanders, at the time of the firing, were 5-9 and had beaten Cal, Air Force and Valparaiso.
While UCR commences its “nationwide search” for Cutts’ successor, the Highlanders have beaten no one and are in the midst of a 10-game losing streak, the low point of which was a 79-40 loss to UC Irvine.
The situation has not been helped by the suspension of their leading scorer, Dikymbe Martin (13.1 points per game), and an ankle injury to the top rebounder, Alex Larsson (5.9 rebounds per game), suffered in the loss to UC Irvine.
Larsson has missed two games, and his availability this week is listed as a “game-to-game” decision, according to an athletic department spokesman. Martin has missed four games due to what the spokesman said was a violation of team rules, and is not expected to play against UH.
As UH seeks to find its equilibrium after a three-game losing streak, can there be a better place to discover it than at home against this week’s schedule?
