By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Each time the University of Hawai'i men's basketball team has reached the NCAA Tournament, the Rainbow Warriors have maintained that just getting there wasn't enough.

Their eyes, often as big as the center court jump circle, frequently said otherwise.

Their performance, usually short of the game that got them there, betrayed their just-glad-to-be-there hearts.

But these Rainbows, as we have noticed, are different. If there is a team that has what it takes to finally get past the bedeviling three-time roadblock that has been the first-round game, you are looking at it.

If there is to be a Rainbow team that achieves the breakthrough, this is it. This is a team that is capable of doing more than just show up and taking its bows in Dallas when it steps on the court Friday against 19th-ranked Xavier at American Airlines Arena.

Not just because, at 27-5, they have won more games than any Rainbow team in school history. Though that's not a bad place to start.

Rather, it is because of who they are and how they have handled everything else in this beyond-wonder season that lends hope for a long-awaited breakthrough.

Unlike past teams that had only been to the NCAA Tournament in their dreams before actually tipping one off, these guys were there last year. They've been through the hype and the waiting. What they went through and what it has taken to get back gives them a valuable leg up on past teams that met swift endings in Pocatello, Idaho; Ogden, Utah, and Dayton, Ohio.

This is a well-rounded team as it demonstrated in the course of the 15-3 Western Athletic Conference season. It can suffocate an opponent with defense as easily as shoot lights-out with 3-pointers. Play the Rainbows these days and you pick your poison.

In the past, if one or two players had an off game the party was pretty much over. This year's team, however, has demonstrated the uncanny ability to pick up the slack in so many ways and with so many people.

Anybody, as Mark Campbell illustrated in a career-high 17-point performance against San Jose State, is capable of stepping in and lending a hand. Or even everybody, witness how the Rainbows rallied around an ailing Predrag Savovic, their leading scorer and emotional leader, and won at Fresno State without him.

Maybe the biggest thing these Rainbows have going for them is a we-belong-here attitude. It has been NCAA-or-bust since the season tipped off in November against Norfolk State. Nor was that their entire mission. As Riley Wallace put it yesterday, "Our goal was always to get back into the NCAA ... and to advance."

These Rainbows are happy to be in the NCAA Tournament to be sure. But, to a man, they will tell you they expect to be around for a while, too.