Wahine give Goo his 300th victory

By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer

Vince Goo's 300th victory as the University of Hawai'i Wahine basketball coach looked much like his first 299. The Wahine huffed and puffed and finally blew fast-breaking Fresno State away last night, 69-53.

Vince Goo acknowledges the crowd after recording his 300th victory as Wahine coach. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

It came in the midst of the Wahine's decisive surge. All-conference point guard Lindsay Logan put the Bulldogs (8-11, 3-6) into attack mode to tie the game at 38 with 12:22 showing. Logan and 'Aiea graduate Aritta Lane scored 13 of FSU's points during the rally.

Hawai'i attacked back, going on an 11-3 run with Christen Roper — Hawai'is 6 foot 5 center — scoring three straight baskets.

"She's 6-5," said Lane, a 6-foot forward. "There's not a whole lot we can do."

Logan took partial blame. "They just kept getting it to that post and our guards should have helped out," she said.

That mini run wasn't enough to muzzle the Bulldogs, who threw eight players full force at the Wahine for more than 15 minutes each. Part of that depth was by design, and part because of foul trouble.

UH outscored FSU 23-2 from the foul line, with Fresno shooting its first free throw with 5:30 remaining.

"Coming in, we looked at the stats," Goo said. "They averaged 20 fouls a game, they were giving up 24 free throws. We told our players we're going to go to the line."

Still, the vast free-throw gap caught Fresno State coach Britt King by surprise.

"Unbelievable," she said. "It's not because we weren't getting fouled. It's tough to come to Hawai'i. It's hard to believe they got to the line 31 times and we only got three opportunities. Free throws tell the story. They were getting opportunities we didn't get."

In a harbinger of collisions to come, Wahine sophomore April Atuaia crashed to the floor less than four minutes into the game. She walked off the court with doctors and returned to the bench 10 minutes later with ice on her left knee. She did not return to the game and will have an MRI tomorrow to determine the injury.

"It's not good," Goo said.

With freshman Chelsea Wagner taking over for last season's WAC Freshman of the Year, the slow-starting Wahine caught FSU at 9. The teams traded leads to 18-all, with Hawai'i sinking half its points from the foul line and the Bulldogs, with four players on the bench with two fouls, showing they had talent in reserve.

"Chelsea was great," Goo said. "Not so much by numbers, but by composure."

Allen and Roper put the Wahine up 22-18 and prompted a timeout. They would not trail again. UH went into halftime up 27-23, despite getting just one point out of four consecutive Bulldog turnovers to close the period, and shooting 26 percent from the field.

The Bulldogs had their own problems, with foul trouble and Logan's odd knack for blowing layups. Under complete control on the perimeter, she bricked three breakaways in the first half and lost control of a fourth before ever going up.

"I definitely made myself crazy," she said. "I couldn't keep control of the ball. It was horrible, horrible, horrible."

Logan gathered herself for that one surge early in the second half and finished with a team-high 15 points and five second-half assists. But it took her 18 shots and she had four turnovers and no assists in the first half against UH point guard Janka Gabrielova, who finally found her shooting touch to help the Wahine put FSU away.

Hawai'i's shooting improved immensely (54 percent) in the second half, when it outrebounded Fresno 26-10.

Its defense also brought the Fresno sprint team to a halt, finally. After Mindy Clark's basket made it 49-42 with 7:32 showing, FSU went five minutes without a basket.

In that time, UH got two more baskets inside and a free throw from Gabrielova, followed by two huge 3-pointers to make it 60-44. Gabrielova, who missed her first seven 3-point attempts, hit the second as the shot clock ran out, releasing it closer to halfcourt than the arc.