Rainbow Wahine turn back UNLV in final, 71-66
By Brandon Masuoka
Advertiser Staff Writer
Thirsty for another basketball win, Hawai'i turned to its power game for some extra juice in the second half.
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Jade Abele and Natasja Allen each scored 17 points as the Rainbow Wahine fended off UNLV, 71-66, in the Hawaii Invitational championship game last night.
UH's Christen Roper blocks a shot attempt by UNLV's Constance Jinks.
In the third-place game, Jenny Pfieffer scored a game-high 24 points to lead Kentucky past Long Island, 72-64.
A crowd of 563 at the Stan Sheriff Center watched the Lady Rebels (5-2) scare the Rainbows (5-2) with a second-half surge.
"We seem to keep doing this, we get the lead, and then we think we've won it, and we let them back in there," Abele said. "We've got to really stop doing that."
UNLV's man-to-man and pressing defense rattled Hawai'i into 17 turnovers and some rushed shots. Hawai'i coach Vince Goo admitted the Lady Rebels were one of the quickest teams the Rainbows have faced this season.
"They're very similar to Kentucky, the difference was their post people crashed the boards really hard and their three perimeter people were quicker than Kentucky," Goo said. "We knew we were going to have our hands full."
The Lady Rebels trailed 31-27 at halftime, but clawed back with defense and strong offensive rebounding to grab a 39-38 lead on Sheena Moore's 3-point shot with 14:02 to play.
UNLV pushed the lead to 41-38, lost it, and surged ahead 45-44 on a 3-pointer by guard Constance Jinks with 10:05 left.
But that's when Hawai'i engineered a 17-5 run and grabbed a commanding 61-50 lead with 3:46 remaining. During the spurt, Allen scored five points and Abele and Michelle Gabriel each scored four.
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"What we wanted to do was settle our offense down and go to a power game," Goo said. "We were going to pass it in to the big people, or put it on the floor and go hard to the basket. We had some pretty good power moves to the basket."
UH guard Michelle Gabriel sinks two of her career-high 13 points.
Gabriel recovered in the second half and made up for erratic play in the first half and early in the second half, Goo said. Goo pulled Gabriel briefly in the second half to calm her down, reinserted her and watched as the senior point guard finished with a career-high 13 points.
"We put the challenge on Michelle," Goo said. "Talk about comeback, she played two different kinds of ball games in the second half."
Gabriel admitted she wasn't getting the passes in the right places, but said the team regrouped in the second half.
"It was just about slowing it down and coming together as a team," Gabriel said.
Hawai'i held All-America candidate Jinks to 15 points on 7-of-24 shooting. Jinks fouled out with just under four minutes to play.
"We wanted her to catch and shoot and not put the dribble on the floor," Goo said. "We backed off. She's the type of player that if you get up on her, she's going to go by you quickly. We wanted her stationary as much as possible."
Said Jinks: "We had Hawai'i back on their heels, we had them timid a bit. In the end, we came back, but it was just too late. ... We didn't capitalize on our (defensive) stops and their turnovers."
Gabriel provided a highlight in the second half when she hit a double-pump jump shot between two defenders with less than five seconds remaining on the shot clock.
"That was all luck," Gabriel said. "I was just hoping that it would touch the rim so we could get a rebound."
Hawai'i placed three players on the all tournament team: Abele and co-tournament MVPs Christen Roper and Allen. Other honorees were Long Island's Tamika Dudley, Kentucky's Pfeiffer and UNLV's Jinks.
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