The Honolulu paper put the Aggie's win on the banner of the front page, which is not unusual. Since the state has no pro teams at any level, the University of Hawai`i is the main sports attraction here. The sporting page had a lengthy article about the game in which Hawai`'s coach Ganot said that it was their worst defensive game of the season, but the article made it clear that UCD played inspired ball. Can't disagree with that. Good offense always beats good defense.
To continue my praise of Rocek and Borra, with Angiwe out Hawaii seemed to change their offense to get the ball inside. #3 was effective in the 2nd down low. But they took the 7 foot Alaskan off the 3 point line in the first half and posted in the second half. He had 7 points in the half, but 4 turnovers. TOS were result of the bigs working hard, and the wings having fast hands. They couldn’t get their offense going despite having our best interior defender out.
I’ll watch the replay later - curious how many left handed drives Pepper scored on. That guy is a baller!
While #3, JoVon McClanahan has been very good against us, I would like to point out that their leading scorer #4, Noel Coleman, has ben held to 8.5 ppg in our two contests with Hawai`i. That's 5 ppg under his average and a reason why no one on these posts has mentioned him. I noticed that most of the defense on him was by Ty Johnson in both games, so we need to credit Johnson with being a terrific defender as well as the 4th leading scorer in the Big West.
Our defense is so much fun to watch and it was really good against Hawaii. When our shots are dropping as well, we are as good as anybody in the conference.