After the University of Hawaii lost to the Big West tail-ender Wednesday night, it looked like things couldn’t possibly get any worse for the Rainbow Warriors.
Then came Saturday night and they did.
If a 77-71 loss to Cal State Northridge isn’t hitting bottom for the ’Bows’ Woes, then you shudder to think what further depths might remain to be plumbed in this rapidly disintegrating season.
A UH team that was in the thick of the conference race when the month began now is in free fall, having lost a fifth consecutive game, its longest slide in five seasons of Big West membership. Overall, it is the longest single-season losing streak since the 2011-12 season.
Suddenly they find themselves at 4-6 in the conference and 13-10 overall. Against Division I competition UH is 11-10.
And now comes the hard part: UH hits the road, where it will play four of its final six regular-season games.
The easy part was supposed to have been this past week — bounce-back week as it were — with the two worst teams in the nine-member conference, UC Riverside and CSUN, coming to Manoa. More fortuitous scheduling you couldn’t ask for. They were teams that UH was 11-point and 121⁄2-point favorites against and teams who ranked 298th and 346th (out of 351) in the NCAA Ratings Percentage Index, a key power metric.
Between them they had two victories in 16 games and a collective 15-game losing streak.
They departed in celebration, UH being the antidote for what ailed them. And UH searching in vain for its own elixir.
Take CSUN, for example. The Matadors were 338th (out of 351 Division I schools) in scoring offense at 64.1 points per game and hadn’t beaten UH here since 1998.
But they proceeded to give a shooting exhibition, shredding the zone defense, making good on 65.1 percent of their field-goal attempts (46.7 percent from 3-point range) to reach a conference season high in points.
The latest visitor to get hot against the ’Bows was Tavrion Dawson, whose 22 points on 11-for-16 shooting gave the Matadors a weapon UH couldn’t match.
How frustrating is it for UH to shoot 51.1 percent (37.5 percent from 3-point range) and still get shot out of a game at home?
Toss in 11 turnovers and some key mental errors and it wasn’t that close for most of the second half, where CSUN led by double figures for most of the final 8 minutes, 35 seconds and UH couldn’t make a key defensive stop when it needed one.
Many in the crowd of 4,061, having seen enough, began hitting the exits with 3 minutes, 18 seconds remaining and CSUN up by 16 points (72-56).
And it was hard to blame them after the most disheartening homestand in years, one that leaves sixth-place UH with just a 1 1/2-game edge over CSUN and Cal Poly in the standings.
It is hard to imagine UH missing out on finishing in the top eight that qualify for the conference tournament next month in Anaheim, Calif. But, after this bewildering lost weekend, can you really rule out anything for these Who Knows ’Bows at this point?
