It’s the time of year when teams are praying they’ve figured out how to navigate properly and use their compass most effectively. March leaves little margin for error for most of men’s college basketball, so heading in the right direction
It’s the time of year when teams are praying they’ve figured out how to navigate properly and use their compass most effectively. March leaves little margin for error for most of men’s college basketball, so heading in the right direction is a now-or-never proposition.
The UH Rainbow Warriors took a sidestep off that ideal path with a heartbreaking 63-61 loss on Saturday night at Long Beach State. Hawaii (19-9, 8-5 Big West) now has just two regular season games remaining, the first coming Thursday night on the road at UC Santa Barbara (19-8, 10-4).
What the loss to Long Beach State ensured is that UH will not win the Big West regular season championship. The Rainbow Warriors sit three games behind UC Irvine (20-10, 11-3), though they will finish no worse than fourth in the standings. Picked to finish sixth in October by Big West media members, Hawaii can improve upon a season that has already exceeded expectations by regaining the form it displayed in winning four of five games before the two-point loss to Long Beach State.
Part of the Warriors’ woes this season has been the inconsistency it has received from the bench. On occasion, a reserve player like Quincy Smith, Aaron Valdes or Davis Rozitis has provided a lift for the ‘Bows and made a difference on the court and in the score sheet. But more often than not, the starting five has been relied upon to provide the entirety of the offensive output.
Smith leads the reserves averaging 5 points per game, but he has scored two or fewer in five of the past six contests. Valdes has averaged just 1.7 points over the team’s past 11 games.
On Saturday, the Long Beach State bench outscored the UH bench by a tally of 34-7. Valdes scored five and Rozitis had a pair, but the starters played almost the whole game and accounted for the other 54 points. Four starters played heavy minutes — Garrett Nevels (38), Isaac Fotu (35), Christian Standhardinger (34), Keith Shamburger (33) — while coach Gib Arnold used essentially an eight-man rotation. Cutting the bench down to eight is fine, but the drop-off from starters to reserves can’t be so great that it forces the starters to all play such extended minutes.
Managing minutes becomes an important skill in March because these athletes have all played a lot of basketball since before Thanksgiving. Practices this time of year typically get shorter so coaches can save their players’ legs for game action. But if Arnold doesn’t trust his bench to weather the storm against the best teams in the Big West, then trying to make a deep run in the conference tournament – when there is even less time to rest – becomes a much more difficult proposition.
UH is still on the cusp of just its fifth 20-win season since 1972, so Coach Arnold has built a strong, capable team that is probably much better than its RPI ranking of 154. It has a legitimate chance to outplay the rest of the Big West in next week’s conference tournament in Anaheim, Calif. that will send one team to the NCAA Tournament.
But relying on five players to win three games in three days is usually an arduous road map to follow successfully. Any team having its best players on the court as much as possible is normal in March. But through 28 games, the bench should have figured out how to provide a spark in a limited role, not extinguish the team’s chemistry.
