Hawaii basketball teams shake off another disappointment

It will be a far quieter Sunday than the University of Hawaii basketball teams had originally planned.

Instead of shoot-arounds and other game-day preparations leading into their Big West openers, the Rainbow Warriors and Rainbow Wahine have some unexpected downtime today after their games with Cal Poly were canceled due to COVID-19 concerns in the Mustangs program.

As an unpredictable 2020 nears its close, the uncertainty for Big West basketball teams figures to continue into the new year.

Of the five Big West series scheduled to open the men’s conference season today and Monday, only one — UC Santa Barbara at UC Irvine — was still slated to be played as of Saturday. On the women’s side, two of the four series were still scheduled to take the court.

“We knew some things could happen, I don’t know if we thought it would be this one right off the bat,” UH men’s coach Eran Ganot said after the Rainbow Warriors’ practice on Saturday. “But you just pivot and shift gears and adjust your schedule accordingly in terms of practice.

“It’s just kind of the nature of the beast right now and I don’t think we’re the only ones going through it. You’re seeing cancellations and postponements, seemingly instantly. But you just have to be able to roll with it.”

The Rainbow Warriors and Rainbow Wahine were scheduled to face Cal Poly in two-game series today and Monday. The UH men were to play host to the Mustangs at SimpliFi Arena. The Wahine were set to depart for San Luis Obispo, Calif., on Friday, but received word of the cancellation before getting on a plane.

By Friday, the Big West’s master schedule indicated the games had been canceled and Cal Poly announced on Saturday that the Mustangs would cancel the first two weekends of its conference schedule due to “a recent positive COVID-19 test within the Cal Poly men’s basketball program.”

Cal Poly also cited “a COVID-19 issue with one of its recent opponents” for the cancellation of this week’s women’s games with Hawaii.

“Obviously we are all very disappointed about the games being cancelled,” Wahine coach Laura Beeman said in a text message to the Star-Advertiser. “The safety and health of our players and staff is our number one priority and will always be. We will get back in the gym and start preparing for our next set of games.”

For the Wahine, the next series is scheduled for Jan. 8 and 9 against UC Riverside in Manoa. The UH men are scheduled to play in Riverside, Calif., on the same dates. Hawaii’s teams have a scheduled bye week for Jan. 1 and 2.

Since Dec. 14, UC Riverside, Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton announced that their men’s teams would pause team activities for two weeks due to positive COVID-19 tests within their programs. UC Davis has canceled men’s and women’s games through Jan. 2 due to county health orders in Northern California.

The pandemic delayed the start of the college basketball season and the Big West altered the schedule format with back-to-back games at a single site rather than the traditional home-and-home series. While teams on the mainland could play starting Nov. 25, the UH men (2-0) had to wait until Dec. 11 to open the season against Hawaii Pacific at SimpliFi Arena. The ‘Bows went 2-0 in games with Division II HPU and Hawaii-Hilo while the Wahine opened with a loss to the Sharks on Dec. 13 and defeated the Vulcans a week later.

Ganot said Cal Poly (2-4) hadn’t been forced into “any interruptions that we knew of,” until this week’s cancellations.

Instead, he said the staff created some competition in practice on Saturday with more game simulations and the Rainbows try to keep sharp with a now three-week break between games.

“The guys have done a good job doing the best they can to manage it all,” Ganot said. “We just have to stay with it and hopefully we don’t have more of those, but we might, and we just have to keep pushing forward.

“Ideally we’d like to play more games, we need games. So we’re going to do the best we can to have our practices be pretty intense and guys really pushing each other.”

The Big West announced last week that the conference tournament was moved from Anaheim, Calif., to Las Vegas. The conference plans “a bubble-like setting” for the tournament scheduled for March 9-13 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.