The short-handed Hawaii men\u2019s basketball team came up big in a statement-making 98-71 victory over Cal State Bakersfield on Thursday night at Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.<\/p>\n
A crowd of 2,991 saw the Rainbow Warriors control the post, the boards and eventually the Roadrunners to improve to 14-4 overall and 6-2 in the Big West. The \u2019Bows remained in a first-place tie with UC Irvine.<\/p>\n
During Wednesday\u2019s practice, UH point guard Aaron Hunkin-Claytor suffered a sprained left ankle. He was in a walking boot on Thursday night, although he said he expects a quick recovery. Isaac Finlinson replaced Hunkin-Claytor in the starting lineup, and wing Quandre \u201cDre\u201d Bullock and guard Hunter Erickson opened in the UH backcourt.<\/p>\n
Bullock produced his first UH double-double \u2014 16 points and 12 rebounds \u2014 while also surpassing the 1,000-point mark in his Division I career. Bullock transferred from South Dakota last June.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good feeling,\u201d Bullock said. \u201cShoutout to the crowd. They brought a lot of energy. We played hard. Everbody on the court stepped up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isaiah Kerr, a transfer from Chico State, came off the bench to score a season-high 16 points. Kerr connected on five of nine shots. One of Kerr\u2019s baskets came after he blocked a shot and went coast-to-coast for a layup. Post Harry Rouhliadeff also had a breakaway dunk for the \u2019Bows.<\/p>\n
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The \u2019Bows entered with two areas of concern. As one of the top rebounding teams in recent years. the \u2019Bows were out-boarded in the previous four games. They also wanted to maintain their free-throw opportunities, having averaged 24.4 attempts in the first 17 games. In a tightly officiated game, the \u2019Bows drew 24 fouls, leading to 34 free throws, of which they made 27.<\/p>\n
The Roadrunners also were understaffed. They were without injured guards CJ Hardy and Jaden Alexander. Acting head coach Mike Scott said he held out Ronald Jessamy, who averaged 6.2 rebounds and had 40 blocks, as an injury precaution. Pierre Genesete, a 6-foot-11 post who can guard all five positions, picked up three fouls in the first half. He eventually fouled out. Tom Mark also was assessed two early fouls, including a technical, that limited his playing time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we were definitely trying to attack,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cOur rebounding coach Gib (Johnson) does a great job of telling us to crash every time and be on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u2019Bows constructed a 53-26 rebounding advantage, including 17-5 on the offensive glass. Finlinson had five of the \u2019Bows\u2019 offensive rebounds. The \u2019Bows made sure to keep 7-foot Isaac \u201cBig Fish\u201d Johnson, 6-10 Yacine Toumi or 6-9 Rouhliadeff in the post rotation.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir bigs were out, so we had to take advantage of what they do well,\u201d UH defensive coordinator Rob Jones said. \u201cThey went small. We kept our bigs in there and had to do our thing on the boards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott said: \u201cAJ George was 6-5 playing center tonight. Hawaii\u2019s probably the biggest team in the league. It\u2019s something we have to try to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr said the \u2019Bows embraced head coach Eran Ganot\u2019s motto of \u201cnext man, every man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really sucks (Hunkin-Claytor) wasn\u2019t able to play tonight. But we have such a deep team, every guy is capable of stepping up.\u201d<\/p>\n
CSUB guard Dailin Smith missed his first seven shots and finished 4-for-16 from the field. But he hit 20 of 25 free throws and finished with 28 points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The short-handed Hawaii men\u2019s basketball team came up big in a statement-making 98-71 victory over Cal State Bakersfield…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,14596],"class_list":{"0":"post-146137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news","11":"tag-editors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}