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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, January 12, 2003

Rainbows' Martin came to play at right time

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

You can imagine the Louisiana Tech basketball team's pre-game scouting report on Phil Martin going something like this:

"Good defense but soft on offense," it probably said. "Can be pesky on defense, but no threat to beat you with his scoring. Likes the elbow jumper but hardly likely to post anybody up. Can be goaded into foul trouble."

If that wasn't the inside word on the University of Hawai'i forward entering last night's game, well, it probably should have been for it fairly summed up the frustrations and limitations of the past month.

"That's what I would have said, too, if I wrote it," Martin said.

But you can put that scouting report where Martin seemed to put everything else last night — in a basket.

In a game where the Rainbow Warriors needed him as much as anytime all season, Martin played his best all-around game of the year, scoring a season-high 19 points and playing stellar defense in UH's 57-53 victory over the Bulldogs.

One week removed from his worst game of the season, a losing effort at Boise State where he was benched much of the game, Martin posted up his 290-pound adversary, Antonio Meeking, hit jump shots, rattled in a hook shot and carried the Rainbows on his broad shoulders for a half.

You name it and before an appreciative Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 6,348, some of whom stayed afterward to chant, "Phil!...Phil!," he did it.

"He did a lot of things he hasn't shown on film this year," acknowledged Riley Wallace, a most- happy-to-see-it UH head coach.

In short, it was everything we've been waiting, indeed hoping, to see from the 6-foot-8 forward in this, his junior season, but were becoming afraid it might not happen.

And it couldn't have come at a better time for the Rainbows (10-2, 3-1 WAC) who were in danger of seeing tomorrow night's showdown with Fresno State (11-2, 4-0) for first place in the Western Athletic Conference lose some of its import.

In a first half where team scoring leader Carl English was an uncharacteristic 1-of-8 and the Rainbows, without Martin, were a horrid combined 2-of-14, the man who began the week fearing he might lose his starting job came through.

Martin made good on 6 of 9 first-half shots and 8 of 12 for the game. But it was that first half, where he contributed 14 of the Rainbows' first-half points, that not only kept UH in a game where it trailed by as many as seven points but helped UH to a 24-21 lead.

"Phil really came to play and we needed what he gave us out there," Wallace said. "He really came through when no one else was scoring for us."

Where this Phil Martin has been since early December isn't known. But it was good to see him back.

And, not a moment too soon, either.