Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Thursday, March 19, 1998

The bigger they are,
the harder Hawaii falls

OH, oh. The Hawaii Rainbows are playing their most important basketball game of the season tonight against Fresno State in the quarterfinals of the National Invitation Tournament.

The winner gets to go to the NIT Final Four at Madison Square Garden in New York. After all, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

So tonight's game at the Stan Sheriff Center is big. Real big.

That's what worries me.

Over the years, as a closet rooter -- there's no cheering in the press box -- I've undergone more agony than ecstasy watching the Rainbows in games that counted. They've lost more times than they've won, believe me.

Other than women's volleyball, when Dave Shoji's Wahine won three NCAA championships, maybe only twice did UH ever win a game that really mattered.

No, I'm not talking about the back-to-back football victories over Brigham Young in 1989-90, although they were thoroughly satisfying. Nor am I referring to Rainbow Classic victories, including the one over Kansas this season. They give you bragging rights, but only momentarily.

I'm talking significant victories. In games that got the Rainbows more than 15 minutes of fame during the season. Victories that made the season.

ONE, of course, was the Rainbows' 27-17 victory over Illinois in the 1992 Holiday Bowl. That put an exclamation point on a season that saw Hawaii make its first -- and only -- Holiday Bowl appearance after winning its first WAC football title.

The second came during the 1993-94 basketball season when the Rainbows beat Brigham Young, 73-66, to sweep through the WAC Tournament and gain an outright bid to the NCAA -- their first and only appearance in the Big Dance since the Fabulous Five.

Otherwise, it has been disappointment after disappointment in games that really counted for the Rainbows.

Perhaps the biggest downer in UH athletic history came during the 1980 College World Series, when the baseball 'Bows, one victory from the national championship, lost twice to Arizona.

Three other disappointments still linger like a bad hangover:

The Fabulous Five's embarrassing 91-64 loss to Weber State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Pocatello, Idaho, in 1972.

The shocking five-set loss of the 31-0 Wahine volleyball team to Michigan State here in the 1995 NCAA Mountain Regional final. Even the loss to Stanford in the NCAA Championship final the following season didn't hurt as much, since the Wahine were outclassed.

And who can forget Black Monday at BYU in 1981, when the Rainbows lost both ends of a doubleheader -- to the same pitcher from Hawaii, Peter Kendrick -- which cost them the WAC championship?

You can see why UH fans worry when the Rainbows play in the really big one.

NOT only is it THE game of the season for coach Riley Wallace's Rainbows -- getting to New York, after all, is prize enough -- but they're meeting a team that's tenacious as its nickname -- the Bulldogs.

Fresno State comes to town a team in turmoil. And when you meet a team whose players are circling the wagons in an us-against-them mode, that's when they're most dangerous.

And they've got quite a weapon. I'm not talking guns and samurai swords. I'm talking about a star guard, swaggering Chris Herren, who could be the worm that spoils Hawaii's bid to get to the Big Apple.

He makes Lizzie Borden, who also came from Fall River, Mass., seem like an angel. He's the one Bulldog the Rainbows will have to muzzle tonight.

Or else it'll be another big one that gets away from the Rainbows.