I watched a replay of the game between Sac State and Hawai`i and I thought it might be interesting to share a few observations for the future contests between the Ags and Hawai`i.

On the face of it, the games were similar in that Sac State lost to both schools by similar margins, 82-71 to UC Davis and 74-61 to Hawai`i, but the games evolved in very different ways. As you all know, we were down by as much as 10 in the second half against the Hornets, but went on a great run with less than five minutes left. Hawai`i, on the other hand, came out blazing and never trailed, opening as much as a 22 point lead in the second half against Sac State before the lead dwindled in garbage time as the Warriors did not score for the last 4 minutes.

This makes it seem like Hawai`i is a lot better than we are. They might be but on first blush, you would say that Hawai`i was home and we beat the Hornets at their place. Partly true, but the game was not played on the UH Manoa campus, but at Brigham Young’s Hawai`i campus, about a 40 minute drive from UH. The crowd was small, so the Warriors lacked the very raucous support of their usual fans. Still, the game might not have reflected Hawai`i’s ability. They shot a red hot 60% from the field including 50% from 3, both percentages 17 and 15 points respectively higher than what they’ve done so far. All of their other games (they are 5-2) have been at home. They also had 4 fewer turnovers than usual, so one could argue that this was their best game of the year.

We’ve seen Sac State’s Callum McRae before in his years at UCR, but so has Hawai`i. They certainly took advantage of his slack of athleticism, often driving right at or past him to score on drives despite his height. In general they did a great job of working the ball inside, but I want to see them against a team that has more overall quickness. On defense, Hawai`i plays strictly man-to-man and they do it well.