Shimonovich takes center stage again

By Dayton Morinaga
Advertiser Staff Writer

Even with its biggest man ready to reclaim his starting spot, the University of Hawai'i men's basketball team will continue to scrap its "big man" starting lineup.

Haim Shimonovich, a 6-foot-10, 275-pound senior co-captain, is once again the team's starting center after a solid performance in the EA Sports Maui Invitational last week.

Even though he has not started in UH's first four games this season, Shimonovich leads the team with 7.8 rebounds per game, and is second with 10.5 points per game.

"I was on the bench, and I was fine with helping the team any way I could," he said. "But it also fired me up because I wanted to prove I could still play."

Shimonovich missed the first two weeks of practice this season because of an Achilles injury. After three weeks of playing catch-up, he finally caught up last week.

"He showed he's ready," UH head coach Riley Wallace said. "And he showed how important he is to this team."

Shimonovich was UH's starting center the last two seasons.

However, Wallace said he does not want to start Shimonovich alongside 6-8 forward Phil Martin and 6-9 forward Julian Sensley. He would prefer to bring one of them off the bench, and start 6-7 Vaidotas Peciukas at small forward.

"When we go big, we're slow," Wallace said. "There are times we might still use it, but when teams show a zone (defense) against us, we're not good at attacking it with our big guys in there."

In any case, Wallace said Shimonovich, Martin and Sensley will likely share equal playing time at the two low-post positions.

New stuff: After a 2-2 start the 'Bows are now in an 18-day stretch between regular-season games. An exhibition game is scheduled for Sunday, but the next regular-season game is scheduled for Dec. 15 against Oregon State.

"It's a good time to add new plays in our offense," Wallace said. "We have our basics in, and now we can work on a lot of other stuff."

The players, however, would prefer to be playing games.

"It would be good to have a (real) game this week," said senior guard Michael Kuebler, who leads the team with 18.0 points per game. "It gets kind of boring going against each other in practice day after day, but this is the schedule we have, so we have to do it."

Reach Dayton Morinaga at dmorinaga@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8101.