The team got in a practice described as \u201clocked in\u201d on Monday ahead of the Credit Union 1 Big West Championships in Henderson, Nev. The four-day tournament begins Wednesday with first-round action at Lee\u2019s Family Forum. UH will play an opponent to be determined at 5:30 p.m. Hawaii time in Friday’s semifinals thanks to its top-two standing and double bye.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe own it. It was painful,\u201d UH coach Eran Ganot said Tuesday in the Stan Sheriff Center loading dock before the team boarded its bus for the airport and a high-stakes trip<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve been very appreciative and impressed by our guys’ ability to let it hurt but then come back ready to roll,\u201d the coach added.<\/p>\n UH\u2019s all-conference honorees have been around the ZIP code. They were UH\u2019s final Big West honors before it heads to the Mountain West next season.<\/p>\n Johnson, of American Fork, Utah, came to UH from Utah State and started his college career at Oregon. He averaged a team-high 13.7 points per game in just 20.9 minutes per game to become UH\u2019s first player to make the BWC first team since Eddie Stansberry in 2019-20.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty amazing. Coming from a place where I felt undervalued last year, and to have the opportunity to come out here and to\u201d \u2014\u00a0the 7-footer paused \u2014\u00a0\u201cfeel the love and feel the support and the belief from my coaches. It\u2019s a night and day difference, and that accolade is a testament to that, of the belief and the love from the coaching staff for my teammates, and it\u2019s an amazing honor.\u201d<\/p>\n Hawaii wing Dre Bullock pushed the pace in transition against Long Beach State on Saturday. (Spectrum News\/Brian McInnis)<\/p>\n Bullock, a high-flying 6-foot-6 native of Franklinton, N.C., was an effective complement to Johnson on the wing and put in 13.6 points and team highs of 5.7 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game.\u00a0His season-best 27-point performance at Cal State Fullerton included the game-winning shot from the top of the arc.<\/p>\n Bullock called it the best season of a college career that featured six different stops in six years, including four at the Division I level.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like my coaches just believed in me since Day 1,\u201d Bullock said. \u201cThey didn’t \u2026 shoot me any lies or sugarcoat anything. They told me straight up what it was, and I needed to work hard to earn their trust too, to kind of balance that out. But yeah, they believed in me. My teammates believed in me. \u2026 That\u2019s what made it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Erickson, a Utah transfer who also played at BYU, stepped in as acting point guard once primary ball-handlers Tanner Cuff and Aaron Hunkin-Claytor went down with season-ending injuries before and during the season. His 4.1 assists per game was fourth in the Big West.<\/p>\n Awardees<\/a> were selected from voting by the league\u2019s 11 head coaches.<\/p>\n Cal State Northridge point guard Josiah Davis, of Kitchener, Ontario, was named Big West Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year.<\/p>\n Long Beach State guard Gavin Sykes, the conference\u2019s second-leading scorer who led his team to the upset of UH on senior night with a 34-point outburst, was named Freshman of the Year.<\/p>\n Cal State Fullerton\u2019s Dedrique Taylor was named BWC Coach of the Year for the first time after he guided the Titans from a last-place preseason prediction to the third seed with a brand-new roster.<\/p>\n UC Irvine big man Kyle Evans was the Best Defensive Player, CSUN\u2019s Mahmoud Fofana picked up Best Hustle Player and Andre Henry got Best Sixth Player.<\/p>\n Ganot said he thought UH\u2019s top reserve Gytis Nemeiksa had a legitimate shot at the sixth man award and team captain Harry Rouhliadeff deserved to be in the discussion as best defensive player.<\/p>\n Johnson was joined on the first team by Davis, UC Irvine\u2019s Evans and Jurian Dixon, UC Santa Barbara\u2019s Aidan Mahaney and Cal Poly\u2019s Hamad Mousa.<\/p>\n Bullock\u2019s company on the second team was Andrew Henderson of UC Riverside, Larry Hughes II of CSUN, Sykes of LBSU and Josh Ward of Cal State Fullerton.<\/p>\n \u201cWell deserved,\u201d Ganot said of the awards. \u201cGreat players on great teams.\u00a0Usually individual success comes from team success. I certainly hoped that we had a couple more (recognized). But at the same time, think there’s a lot of really talented players our league.\u201d<\/p>\n Brian McInnis<\/a>\u00a0covers the state\u2019s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.\u00a0He can be reached at\u00a0brian.mcinnis@<\/a>charter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU \u2014 A pinch of postseason recognition helped ease the burn of a dashed senior night for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[19375,6632,6631,19376,1815,2289,131,133,132,127,136],"class_list":["post-215009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-app-college-sports","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brian-mcinnis","tag-college","tag-hawaii","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215009","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=215009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Hawaii_MBB_LB_6_HI_0308.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n