By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

If there were any lingering doubts there is something pinch-me special about this University of Hawai'i men's basketball team, they disappeared about the time Bobby Nash's game-winning 3-point shot caressed the net last night.

By the time his 25-footer from the right side and the game-ending buzzer found a synchronized harmony to beat Oral Roberts, 55-54, there were many true believers to be found among the 5,916 on hand at the Stan Sheriff Center.

Clearly, using a "prayer" shot to beat an institution founded by an evangelist speaks to the wonder of this team and, to this point, this beyond-remarkable season.

It isn't just that these Rainbow Warriors are 7-0 and off to their best start in 32 years. It isn't merely that they are in the championship game of the Outrigger Hotels Rainbow Classic against Southern California, bidding for a fourth consecutive title.

It is how they are doing it. Which is to say every which way possible, if not improbable. And up to 11 deep on the roster.

You could hardly blame ORU's Caleb Green for falling to the court in disbelief, if not frustration, after Nash's chuck-and-pray-for-luck shot dropped to end the Golden Eagles' eight-game winning streak.

For if there was a player on the floor ORU might have wanted and, indeed, wished to take a last-gasp shot, Nash was it. He had missed his last eight 3-pointers over three games, sometimes painfully so.

When Nash appeared to finally have made a 3-pointer with 15 minutes, 26 seconds left last night, it was belatedly reduced to a 2-pointer. It had been that kind of a streak for young Nash.

"(Matt) Gibson, (Julian) Sensley, (Jeff) Blackett. They were all on the floor and the kid (Nash) had been struggling," a still-shellshocked Scott Sutton, the ORU coach acknowledged. "But he stepped up and made the big shot."

And, in doing so, he beat a team that had won four road games on game-winning shots of its own in the final seconds since last year.

What was to have been the final play wasn't even supposed to have gone to Nash but, somehow, the ball ended up in his hands. And, as has been the case with these 'Bows this season, he knew what to do with it.

Just as it was Matt Gipson who stepped out of the shadows to keep the 'Bows in the game long enough for Nash to work his magic. The one they call "Big Matt" weighed in with a season-high 19 points and 12 rebounds.

A different night, a different player, but always the right answer for UH. Always finding a way, somehow.

"I was on some good teams at (the University of) Oklahoma, where I didn't play much, but I had this same feeling that I do with this team," Gipson said. "Things that you can just sense. That togetherness, that intensity to win close games."

"It must be our year," Riley Wallace said in trying to explain the otherwise unexplainable. "What else can you say about this team?"

What, indeed.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.