WANT a scary "Close- your-eyes" moment? Sneak a peak at the current Western Athletic Conference men's basketball standings. UH deserves to go
somewhere this postseasonWith six games left and the Rainbows barely hanging on to a share of fifth place, one doesn't get a warm and fuzzy feeling about Hawaii's WAC Tournament chances. Not with the team making what could be its death march to TCU and SMU this week.
Assume that the Rainbows finish out the season 3-3 -- and that's generous, figuring on wins against Rice and Tulsa at home and at San Jose State. The best Hawaii can hope for is a 6-8 mark, which would be good enough for the sixth and final Pacific Division berth in the WAC Tournament.
Should the current standings remain the same, Hawaii is looking at a first-round game with Colorado State. That's a winnable contest, but if the Rainbows were victorious, they would face Fresno State in the quarterfinals.
Great.
If Hawaii managed to finish fifth, the first-round game would be against Wyoming. Another winnable game. But guess who the Rainbows would meet in the quarterfinals? TCU.
Wonderful.
My guess is, given a choice, the Rainbows would prefer to see the Horned Frogs rather than the Bulldogs. Hawaii matches up better with TCU's running game. And as New Mexico showed a few weeks ago, the TC in TCU can mean "Turnover City."
Maybe the Rainbows could get hot in the tournament. It happened in 1994.
But Hawaii had 7-foot-3 Tony Maroney in the post then. There is no wide body there now.
The Rainbows still have a decent enough RPI rating. They are 51st in the ranking released yesterday, down from last week's 34th, and way down from the No. 12 spot they held four weeks ago.
It's too bad because this team deserves to go somewhere. But you have to wonder if an 18-10 record would even be good enough to get into the NIT again.
This is not to write the Rainbows off this season. But is anyone else wishing 1997 neverz
ended?
I want my TripleCast. Were all those commercials during Friday's opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics annoying or what? It's inexcusable that the network would cut away during the parade of athletes, randomly selecting to skip over parts of the alphabet.
OK. Maybe Portugal didn't send a big contingent, but we'll never know. And there had to be some Swiss athletes.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment was the glossing over of the sumotori, particularly Musashimaru, who was leading the U.S. team. Fiamalu Penitani deserved more than Jim Nantz's comment: "Oh, look, he's even waving an American flag."
Just as Andrea Joyce was about to mention that Penitani was an American, the cameras just had to cut away to yet another interview of Tara Lipinski.
Nothing against the skater, but is she the only one competing? It sure seems that way, with the constant, "Ooh, Tara's first steps on the ice . . . her first argument with her coach . . . her first fall . . ."
There's much better coverage on the Japanese channels.
I wish that the broadcasts would show the competitions, instead of trying to be a mix of MTV, Entertainment Tonight, Hard Copy and Jay Leno.
At least CBS got it right with their motto: "Share a moment with the world." Because that's all we're getting to see. Moments.
The most (you fill in the blank) comment regarding the hoo-hoo over the girls state soccer tournament came last week, when one radio personality claimed that the only reason the girls wanted to play at Aloha Stadium "was to see their faces on the JumboTron."
Cindy Luis is a Star-Bulletin sportswriter.
Her column appears weekly.
