Isaac Fleming was absent for some of the season’s first practices in the Stan Sheriff Center. Perhaps fittingly, he also missed the last.

The Hawaii basketball team will be without its fourth-leading scorer for its march to March Madness. Fleming and UH parted ways Monday, prematurely capping an up-and-down two-year career highlighted by bursts of talent and lowlighted by off-court distractions.

A disconnect between player and coaching staff reached the point of no repair. Fleming tweeted out a completed request for release form Monday afternoon with the message, “It’s official I want to thank the University of Hawaii for everything But I have to do what’s best for me!”

Although he left the team before the end of the season, he will still have to sit out games for a full season if he transfers to another NCAA Division I school.

Fleming offered up the Twitter hashtag, “#MyNextMoveWillBeMyBest”.

Multiple attempts to reach Fleming (9.5 ppg, 44.5 percent FG, 30.7 percent 3FG, 74.2 percent free throws) were unsuccessful Monday evening.

UH coach Eran Ganot said only, “We met with Isaac. He requested his release, it was granted, and we wish him the best moving forward.” He declined further comment.

The Rainbow Warriors held an energetic late-night practice Monday. Morale seemed high.

UH players were not available for comment afterward.

The team departs this afternoon for Northern California in preparation for an important battle at UC Davis (10-17, 5-9). The Rainbows can clinch a share of the Big West regular-season title with a victory, in addition to the No. 1 seed for next week’s Big West tournament. If not, they’ll turn to Saturday’s regular-season finale at Long Beach State.

That they’ll be doing it without Fleming was surprising, but not immensely so after the sophomore guard was plainly morose during much of Saturday’s senior-night win over Cal State Northridge. Fleming played only five first-half minutes, and as had been the trend, glumly watched freshman Sheriff Drammeh receive many of the minutes he formerly occupied.

With that a fresh issue, it was not considered a given that Fleming would accompany the team on the road this week before the guard’s social media disclosure.

He said in another tweet: “Even though I removed my self from the team I still want my brother(s) to get a ring and do something remarkable this season.”

Fleming and the first-year coach Ganot got off to a rocky start when Fleming was asked to accept a bench role, as he had last season under Benjy Taylor, the interim coach who’d recruited him to Manoa. Fleming, who was known for occasional outbursts of emotion, took a leave of absence from the team in the preseason lasting about a week and a half.

Things were mended before the season opener, though issues would periodically resurface and temporary truces would repeat.

The prodigiously talented Delaware native could break defenses down, getting into the paint with his crossovers and hesitation dribbles. He was adept at playmaking in traffic, making him one of the team’s best options when a set broke down and UH needed a shot late in the clock.

He scored 21 early in the season at Texas Tech, then a career high. Against Northern Iowa in the Diamond Head Classic, he had six steals, including a wild sequence of swipes in four straight UNI possessions resulting in baskets.

Before spraining his ankle in a home loss to Long Beach State on Jan. 30, Fleming strung together five games of double-figure scoring, including 22 at home against UC Santa Barbara.

“I’d been warned about Fleming hitting big shots,” UCSB coach Bob Williams said then. “I felt like we couldn’t quite contain them.”

With Aaron Valdes out of the lineup with a toe injury, Fleming became one of the team’s go-to scoring options in the first two Big West road games of the season. His efforts at UC Riverside (15 points) and Cal State Fullerton (career-high 23) earned him Big West Player of the Week honors.

But after he rolled his ankle against LBSU, Fleming elected to stay back from the road trip to UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly, which may have signaled a deeper schism. He missed four games in total and his minutes were curtailed severely even once he became active. Ganot increasingly favored Drammeh.

In the last four games, he totaled just seven points while averaging 12.8 minutes per game.