HENDERSON, NEV. >> A year later, the UC Riverside and Hawaii men’s basketball teams find themselves at a familiar dueling site: the quarterfinals of the Big West Championships.

The Highlanders have swapped space-eating centers and the Rainbow Warriors have added seven players, but the stakes have not changed. UCR defeated UH in last year’s tournament, extending the ’Bows’ streak of first-round losses to five.

“It’s serendipitous it would match up like this,” said UCR coach Mike Magpayo, referencing how both teams veered from projected paths to face each other.

But Magpayo, who was promoted from interim to permanent head coach last summer, proclaimed: “It’ll be two evenly matched teams that do it different ways, and it’ll be a battle. I think it’ll be one of the best games of the day.”

Magpayo and UH’s Eran Ganot have distant coaching ties. Ganot was an assistant under Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett. Magpayo worked under David Patrick, who began his coaching career under Bennett. Ganot and Magpayo have embraced Bennett’s approach of defense, ball sharing, and international recruiting.

At Riverside, Patrick developed a program emphasizing height and length. Patrick left to become Oklahoma’s associate head coach, but Magpayo kept the blueprint. In 2020-21, the Highlanders’ defense revolved around 7-foot Jock Perry. This year, 7-1, 295-pound Callum McRae is the center of attention.

The Highlanders’ strategy is to harass outside shooters with tall guards — 6-4 Zyon Pullin, 6-5 Flynn Cameron and 6-7 Wil Tatersall — and then funnel drives toward McRae.

“David Patrick started it all,” Magpayo said. “He didn’t like little guards. He liked size. We kind of continued to recruit that way.”

Every Highlander is at least 6 feet 3.

McRae, a redshirt junior from New Zealand, was injured and did not play last season. “I think he’s back to where he should be — a dominating and super impactful player on both sides of the court,” Magpayo said.

When Magpayo was coaching at Columbia, he studied upcoming opponent Wisconsin’s post-defense method of being aggressive while not incurring fouls. “They just worked on verticality and taking those chest-blows every day,” Magpayo said of the Badgers’ training. “Callum has a great feel for when to take a charge and when to go vertical.”

McRae averages 8.0 rebounds while being assessed only 1.8 fouls per game. He has not fouled out in 27 games this season.

Pullin, who is most comfortable at the point, averages 14.0 points and 5.6 rebounds. He has a 2-1 ratio of assists to turnovers.

“Zyon’s got another level to him,” Magpayo said. “He’s big and strong. Their nickname for him is ‘Muscles.’ He’s just blessed with that 6-4 frame. And he can dribble both ways, which is an under-rated talent in college basketball. He can go right or left so he’s hard to scout. And he’s got an NBA burst, a pro burst. He has an ability to draw fouls because of that. It’s hard to stay in front of him.”

In November, JP Moorman hit a 70-foot shot at the buzzer to beat Arizona. A month later, he opted to leave school and pursue a pro career. Tattersall, who was underwhelming earlier in the season, has thrived as a hybrid-four since Moorman’s departure. “He’s got our offense humming,” Magpayo said of Tattersall.

The ’Bows counter with their own multi-role players, Jerome Desrosiers, who can play the four and five, is the ’Bows’ best on low-post cuts. Kamaka Hepa, a 6-10 three, has earned praise for the shots opponents refuse to take against his 7-foot wing span. Junior Madut can play the one, two and three.

“We’re battle tested,” Madut said. “We’ve been in these situations before. We’ve lost people. We’ve had situations where people didn’t think we were going to win certain games. We’ve had our backs against the wall the whole season. I’m confident in us to handle this situation the way we handled the whole season. We’re going to keep coming and fighting.”