Hawaii’s opposition was not imposing at last week’s Aloha @ Oahu intercollegiate golf tournament, but the Rainbow Warriors’ scores at Turtle Bay’s Fazio Course were.

UH junior Ryan Kuroiwa shot a career-low 67 in Thursday’s first round. He was a shot better the next day and won with a total of 11-under-par 133.

To put that in perspective, the 2011 OIA champ had broken par only four times in his collegiate career until a week ago.

Senior Nainoa Calip, whose scoring average of 74.2 is a tiny bit higher than Kuroiwa’s, finished two shots back after a scorching 65 in Friday’s final round. David Saka, another UH senior, took third at 69140.

Rainbows Brian Lee (148), Justin Chu (151) and Tommy Yamashita (152) the final senior also finished in the top 15.

The Rainbows’ winning team total was 20-under 556. The teams they vanquished were a trio of Hawaii Division II schools Brigham Young-Hawaii (587), Hawaii Pacific (600) and Chaminade (607) and Division III’s Pacific (Ore.) University (645) and Whitman (672).

UH coach Ronn Miyashiro said the tournament came about because of some "friendly chatter" among the golfers on Oahu during Christmas break. He found out BYUH and Whitman had an event planned at Turtle Bay during spring break and entered his guys to help them stay focused for the final two tournaments of the year.

Miyashiro knew the dangers of taking on D-II squads, who have built-in incentive.

"So my goal, or motivational speech to the team, was not about winning, losing, or beating the individual in your group," Miyashiro recalled. "It was more along the lines of staying focused on your own game throughout the entire round and not settling for mediocrity. If we were able to do that, the win would be the end result.

"I have been trying to stress this since the end of the John Burns (tournament) because we have been getting caught up in the What is going on around me,’ rather than focusing on me. Stop caring about everyone else’s business, and worry about what is going to make me better."

Something clicked. The Rainbows’ winning total was 31 better than runner-up BYUH, and the best two-day total Miyashiro can remember. The Hilo High alum was 23 when he started coaching UH 16 years ago, after playing his senior year at UH. He played for Oregon his first three years.

The winning total could have been better, of course. Fazio’s closing hole has a new tee box. The first three Rainbows to see it were a combined 7 over.

Kuroiwa and Calip avoided pretty much all problems.

"They know that they have the ability to play on this level," Miyashiro said. "They just needed to convince themselves that if you want to be good, you have to be committed to being good. Once you do that, your effort and mentality towards practice and focusing on doing the right things to make yourself better makes you a better player.

"You would think that this thinking should be automatic with everyone on the team, but it’s something I fight with everyday. College life has a ton of distractions, and I find more and more of my time trying to keep them focused on the task at hand, which is golf and school, and away from things that I know will affect the team’s success."

Kuroiwa became the Rainbows’ first medalist since TJ Kua in 2011. Kuroiwa’s best previous collegiate finish was ninth at the John Burns Intercollegiate.

The team title might have come with a D-II/III asterisk, but it is still the school’s first collegiate win since the 2004 Ron Moore Intercollegiate in Denver. Five years ago, Hawaii won the Naris Cup in Okayama, Japan.

Next up is the Western Intercollegiate in Santa Cruz, Calif., April 12-13. All that’s left after that is the Big West Championships. UC Davis, at 61st, is the best in the BWC in this week’s Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings.

"It basically comes down to a winner-take-all situation as far as the NCAA championship bid," Miyashiro said. "Our team knows we can compete there, because we were leading the championship after the first round last year. The ones who were there know that crappy feeling of losing the lead of a tournament we could have won. … The hope is, they learned from it and use it to their advantage this year."

Freshman Skye Inakoshi has the team’s low scoring average (73.1), followed by Saka at 73.3.