By Dayton Morinaga
Advertiser Staff Writer
TULSA, Okla. — Even after three consecutive nights of all-you-can-eat buffet dinners, the Hawai‘i men’s basketball team remains hungry and restless.
After four days in the nothing-to-do downtown section of Tulsa, the Rainbows will finally play its quarterfinal game of the Western Athletic Conference Tournament today against Texas Christian at 10:30 a.m. Hawai‘i time.
"We’re ready to play," junior guard Mike McIntyre said. "It seems like we’ve been here a long time already, but we’d like to stay a couple days more, at least."
Hawai‘i needs to win three games in as many days to win the tournament and earn the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. After closing the regular season with four wins in their last five games, the No. 5 seeded Rainbows are being labeled "dangerous" and "darkhorse" by some of the WAC media covering this week’s tournament.
In its preview article on the WAC Tournament, the Tulsa World ran a color photograph of Hawai‘i guard Predrag Savovic dunking over a Fresno State player, and ran a headline calling the Rainbows "exciting."
"I kind of like that," McIntyre said. "It’s like we’re still underdogs, but teams are kind of scared of playing us."
Still, today’s game will not be easy. TCU is the No. 4 seed, and has already won 20 games this season.
Despite the dismissals of two starters last month, the Horned Frogs closed their regular season by winning four of six. They also finished the regular season as the top-scoring team in NCAA Division I with an average of 94.1 points per game.
The teams split their regular-season series in drastic fashion: TCU defeated Hawai‘i, 103-64, at Fort Worth on Jan. 4; the Rainbows beat the Horned Frogs, 102-87, at the Stan Sheriff Center on Feb. 22.
"I think it was real important to beat them at home," Hawai‘i senior center Troy Ostler said. "We’re a more confident team right now. We know what it takes to beat them."
Perhaps, but the Rainbows’ road woes remain. Hawai‘i went 1-7 away from the Stan Sheriff Center this season, with the only victory coming at San Jose State last week.
Technically, today’s game is a neutral site for the Rainbows, even though they traveled the farthest of the nine teams to reach Tulsa. In contrast, TCU had one of the shortest trips — a 50-minute flight from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
"I don’t think the place matters," said McIntyre, who scored a career-high 21 points in the victory over TCU two weeks ago. "It’s basketball no matter what city we’re in."
However, today marks the 10th consecutive day the Rainbows have spent on the road. They closed the season with conference games at San Jose State and Texas-El Paso, then flew directly to Tulsa to prepare for the tournament.
"We like it that way," coach Riley Wallace said. "It allows us to get acclimated and we can get more practice days in."
To be sure, Wallace called on the help of Brent Mackey, who played under Wallace at Seminole Junior College from 1985-87. Mackey is now the varsity basketball coach at Hale High in Tulsa, and he allowed the Rainbows to practice in the school’s gym this week.
"It’s perfect for us because we get the entire gym to ourselves," Wallace said. "We can have our own private workouts."
The other teams — men and women — had to share the use of a practice gymnasium on the Tulsa campus if they wanted to workout this week. The Reynolds Center, where both the men’s and women’s tournaments are being played, is off limits for practicing to all teams, including Tulsa.
The only interruptions came from the Hale students, who gathered near the gym doors to gawk at the Rainbows. The Hale cheerleaders stopped their own practice to adopt freshman Carl English as their favorite Rainbow. "He looks like he could be in a boy band," one cheerleader said. "He’s beautiful."
Now, the Rainbows are hoping to find a similar reaction to their motion-oriented offense, which has been alternately beauty and the beast this season. Ostler, the team co-captain, thinks the team is hitting its peak, despite a season-ending loss at UTEP last Saturday.
"Our offense and defense are playing better than it has all season," he said. "Even when we lost to UTEP, we played pretty well. If we can maintain that, we’ll be hard to stop."
Notes: Hawai‘i is 13-12 in WAC Tournament games since Riley Wallace became coach in 1987. The Rainbows’ only WAC Tournament championship came in 1994. ... Hawai‘i and TCU have never met in the WAC Tournament prior to today. ...The Rainbows surrendered their most points this season in a 103-64 loss at TCU on Jan. 4, but then had their highest output of the season in a 102-87 victory over the Horned Frogs in Honolulu on Feb. 22. ... Savovic became just the ninth Rainbow to make the All-WAC first team earlier this week. He has scored in double figures in 25 of 27 games this season. ... Since McIntyre became the team’s starting point guard on Feb. 15, the Rainbows are 4-1. In those five games, he is averaging 9.4 points and 3.7 assists per game. ... Ostler made the WAC All-Tournament team last season when he scored 35 points and grabbed 24 rebounds in two games.
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