By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
On a night it was never supposed to have in a town where it was said it never had a chance, the University of Hawai‘i men’s basketball team found itself dancing to the beat of "We are the Champions."
Even as they triumphantly took scissors to the nets in the ritual of conquerors, these improbable Cinderfellas were also cutting away at the incredulity of a 78-72 overtime Western Athletic Conference Tournament championship victory over Tulsa that launched them into the NCAA Tournament from the Golden Hurricane’s home court.
Before the once but no longer disbelieving eyes of a Reynolds Center crowd of 8,160, the Rainbows took one of the biggest and most remarkable leaps in school athletic history.
It was a bounding leap into the 64-team NCAA Tournament field, really, for a school that has been there only twice previously and not since 1994. Call it a triumph of spirit and chemistry for a team that had endured a series of debilitating injuries and an ineligibility.
For degree of difficulty, it rivaled the victory of seven years ago on the floor of the Delta Center in Salt Lake City against Brigham Young, a Trevor Ruffin 3-pointer from Temple Square.
This time they did it emerging from the toughest gauntlet the tournament seedings could throw at them in consecutive days: Texas Christian, Fresno State and, finally, the host Golden Hurricane.
The Rainbows, a team that a month ago had lost eight of 12 games in one stretch and was fighting just to stay out of the pigtail play-in game for the bottom seed in the tournament, ended up taking it all with a flourish.
A team that had managed to win but one of nine road games took the biggest one of them all 3,800 miles from home in front of perhaps the conference’s most rabid fans, the Reynolds Rowdies.
A team that had handed in its National Invitation Tournament application as a distant long shot and was barely .500 two short weeks ago had an engraved invitation to The Dance.
As impressive as what they did was how they managed to do it. With their top player, Troy Ostler, on the bench for most of the game with an ankle injury, the Rainbows looked among themselves and found others worthy in this most prime-time of moments.
Carl English, the redshirt freshman from Patrick’s Cove, Canada who closed his eyes and imagined himself back on a deserted court in Newfoundland, calmly took over the contest with a game-high 25 points, including the basket that put the game into overtime.
"I can barely talk, now," English said afterward.
Not that words were required to tell the tale of this triumph.
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