DAVIS, Calif. >> The University of Hawaii men’s basketball team, which dominated on the glass on Friday, lost the battle of boards on Saturday in closing out its regular season with a 74-66 loss at UC Davis.
The Rainbow Warriors finished as the sixth seed in next week’s Big West Conference tournament and will face third-seeded UC Riverside in their opening game at 6 p.m. Thursday.
This time, it was the Aggies who were dominant on the glass, outrebounding the Rainbow Warriors 36-22 after being outrebounded 42-22 the night before.
“We knew they would come out and make that a point of emphasis with that kind of discrepancy,” Rainbow Warriors coach Eran Ganot said. “And that was disappointing.”
James Jean-Marie led all scorers with 19 points. But four Aggies scored in double figures and UC Davis played a much tighter game on defense than it did on Friday, when Hawaii won the opener of this two-game series, 73-68.
Ezra Manjon led UC Davis with 16 points on eight-of-15 shooting. The 5-foot-11 Manjon seemed to score at will driving inside against Hawaii’s bigs.
“He’s a huge part of our team,” Christian Anigwe said of Manjon. “Starting point guard, plays a huge amount of minutes, runs our team. And we’re going to rely on him in the tournament.”
Said Ganot, “He’s a heck of a tough cover. He’s made a really big jump from year one to year two. He plays a lot of minutes and keeps attacking.”
Aggies coach Jim Les said the staff challenged Manjon.
“When you can challenge the better players on your team and they rise to that challenge, it sends a great message throughout the whole team about the culture and what we expect from all of our players,” Les said.
Anigwe, Damion Squire and Elijah Pepper scored 14 points each for the Aggies. Pepper had a game-high 11 rebounds and Anigwe had seven. Jean-Marie led the Rainbow Warriors with seven rebounds.
“After (Friday’s) game, our coaches were talking about how they simply outworked us on the glass,” Anigwe said. “That was one of our major points we were focusing on — our physicality on the glass, defensively and just attacking them offensively as well.”
UC Davis also did a good job of harassing Hawaii’s ballhandlers outside and preventing open 3-point shots. The Rainbow Warriors (11-9, 9-9 Big West) made just four of 16 from behind the arc. On Friday, Hawaii made 12 of 25 3-pointers.
Saturday’s game began similar to Friday’s with a back-and-forth affair in the first 10 minutes. This time, it was UC Davis (9-7, 6-4) that began to separate in the latter stages of the first half. An 11-2 run, including the final seven points to close the period, gave the Aggies a 36-30 lead at the break, their biggest to that point.
Hawaii never found any consistency on offense. UC Davis built a 57-43 lead midway through the second half. The Rainbow Warriors battled back and cut the deficit to 61-59 with 3:57 left on two free throws by Jean-Marie.
But that was the high-water mark for Hawaii. Squire and Manjon kept attacking and making key shots inside. The Rainbow Warriors got it to three points twice and Casdon Jardine had a tying 3-pointer miss with 1:40 left. Pepper grabbed the rebound.
“I like their team, we always have really good battles,” Les said of Hawaii. “I think because there’s some similarities between the programs and the culture. The one thing that Hawaii does that’s really hard to defend is they do a really good job of putting their guys into positions to be successful that play to their strengths.”
Ganot said it’ll be good for his team to have a day off today before preparing for the tournament, especially as it played a full schedule in a year disrupted by COVID-19.
“I feel that our guys have battled,” he said. “I think we’re the only team that’s played 18. I’m really proud of that. They deserve a recharge day and to get back at it.”
