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The people have spoken.
By a final split of 70.1% to 29.9% in voting on Twitter, the top-seeded “IncrediBows” of 2015-16 downed the No. 3-seeded “Internationals” of 2001-02 to claim the championship of the Hawaii basketball 100th Season Best-Team Bracket.
The 2015-16 edition could already be described as the most accomplished, with the school record for most wins and the only UH victory in NCAA Tournament play, as Hawaii finally won on its fifth and most recent dance invitation with a roster headlined by Stefan Jankovic, Roderick Bobbitt and Aaron Valdes.
That came 14 years after UH’s last previous appearance — by a 2001-02 team, the other finalist in the 16-team bracket which featured Predrag Savovic and Carl English.
The “IncrediBows” went 28-6 in 2015-16 and rolled through four rounds in the Star-Advertiser/Hawaii Warrior World fantasy bracket without a major challenge in the final vote tabulations. Its closest battle came in the quarterfinals against the 1997-98 “Dynamic Duo” team — led by Anthony Carter and Alika Smith — which they downed by a split of 66% to 34%.
The coaches of the finalists were two very different personalities: current head man Eran Ganot, then a taciturn rookie head coach in 2016, and still-fiery veteran Riley Wallace in 2002, who was taking a UH team to the NCAAs for the third time.
One thing these teams had in common were that both starred a dynamic player originally from Serbia; Jankovic for the ’16s, and Savovic for the ’02s.
Was it recency bias? A superior social media campaign? Or simply a belief among the people that their talent and feats (the most wins ever at 28-6, and the program’s only NCAA Tournament win) deserved top billing?
Regardless, bragging rights belong to Jankovic, Bobbitt, Valdes and the rest of the players of the ’16s.
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