Eran Ganot took it all hard Wednesday night.
His crunch-time technical foul. Hawaii’s loss to a last-place team in UC Riverside. And the general state of self-doubt that’s suddenly befallen the coach’s basketball program.
UH (13-9, 4-5 Big West) had its losing streak stretched to four games as Riverside improbably won at the Stan Sheriff Center for the third straight year, 64-60, snapping the Highlanders’ overall 10-game slide.
The call on Ganot was as much a postgame topic of conversation as his pregame shuffling of the Rainbow Warriors’ regular starting lineup. He shifted regulars Mike Thomas, Gibson Johnson, Drew Buggs and Sheriff Drammeh to the bench and later explained, “I thought the guys who were in there deserved to be in there.”
The usually mild-mannered Ganot was animated down the stretch. Thomas drew some contact on a take to the rim with three minutes left, eliciting no whistle and instead Ganot’s ire. Chance Murray drilled the go-ahead 3-pointer at the other end for Riverside, UH called timeout and Ganot continued barking at the officiating crew of Kevin Brill, Tom Nally and Andy Cohn.
Technical, Ganot. A first in his three-year career. The same call that he automatically subs players out of games for as a policy. The realization stuck with him in the game’s aftermath.
“Our program is no excuses, accountability. That starts with me,” Ganot said. “I can’t put ourselves … I could sit here and say I don’t think what I said warranted a technical. But I did put myself in position to have that happen, and that’s something I cannot do. Our guys don’t deserve that, our program doesn’t deserve that. I haven’t had that in three years. But, it happened. I gotta own that, I gotta live with it, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“But in addition to that, I gotta do a better job of getting our team to where we were.”
Sixth-place UH has its first four-game Big West losing streak after occupying first place in late January. It matched the longest overall skid under Ganot (nonconference play in 2016-17).
The Rainbows held second-half leads in all four losses. That included a seven-point buffer with 10 minutes left Wednesday.
On Ganot’s tech, guard Koh Flippin converted one of two free throws for a three-point UCR lead with 2:19 remaining.
UH didn’t necessarily lose because of it; there were a host of things the Rainbows did poorly all game. Season-low shooting from the field (33.3 percent), ball control (17 turnovers), 3-point defense (10 allowed on 40 percent long-range shooting), and general execution against another zone defense.
Riverside interim coach Justin Bell was also assessed a technical, as the teams headed to the locker rooms for halftime tied at 30. But UCR rallied and got 3s from Menno Dijkstra and DJ Sylvester in the final minute.
Playing (and coaching) with the right amount of passion was generally not a problem during UH’s four-game winning streak to 4-1. But since? Riverside players outdid their Hawaii counterparts there, too; guard Brocke Stepteau noted afterward they’d ceased playing for each other at some point over the losing streak. Thomas said of Riverside, “They were hungry.”
In that, UH could pick up something from the team that just improved to 6-17 overall.
UCR was without two of its top three scorers in guard Dikymbe Martin (suspension) and center Alex Larsson (ankle injury). But the visitors played with fire in their absence and gave Bell his first victory since he took over for Dennis Cutts on Jan. 1.
“For the morale standpoint, our guys have been fired up all year,” Bell said. “They’re ready to play and they practice hard. We demand a lot of out of them. They come ready to play every game. And I think because they practice hard they believe.”
UH eschewed practice on Thursday in favor of a team meal and film session. On Saturday the Rainbows host eighth-place Cal State Northridge (5-19, 2-8), a team they beat by 19 at the Matadome on Jan. 6.
