Sidelines
UH didn’t have
the moves to danceIF the NCAA Tournament is the Big Dance, beautiful music, Cinderella at the ball, then the NIT is the guy who couldn't get a date, dancing around the house in his bebedees.
And Hawaii's trip home, only to have to turn around immediately and get right back on a plane bound for Vegas, well, that was a thumbs-elbows-kick combo worthy of Elaine on "Seinfeld."
Sweet fancy Moses.
Cry, cry again.
That final frequent flyer mile boost seems to sum up this Rainbow season once and for all. Time after time they've shown us that you can come home again. But all too quickly they are booted back out the door, back out into the cold, cruel world. Out on a plane again. Out on the road again.
Even Willie Nelson would have snapped by now.
So they're there now, on the mainland again, one last trip, one last run. This is how this season turned out. This is how it refuses to die.
March's cruelest initials:
NIT.
UH was supposed to be past this point, with all the momentum left over from last year's corner-turning team, with all those wins over Tulsa, with those WAC tournament titles, with four starters back and a great recruiting class to fill all the holes.
But no.
This turned out to be a good team, with nothing special about it. (Good manners are nice. But they don't count.) These guys lost seemingly easy ones, they talked openly about the woes of the road. Riley Wallace said he had no depth.
The guys who had been so good when he signed them, in preseason drills, watched games in warm-ups.
Carl English was a nice scorer, but no Savo. Haim Shimonovich, the man from the Middle East, had other things to worry about besides basketball. Not that you could blame him. Not this year, not now.
Did UH miss Scott Rigot? Hawaii missed everything about last season.
It became painfully obvious as the year went on.
This team just didn't have "it."
These guys can't dance.
There are times when the NIT is a good thing. When your program is on the way up, and this would be an accomplishment, and it's a joy just to keep playing.
This NIT is the other kind, the last chance to salvage a season. It wasn't a bad year, but a disappointing one. This 18-11 season will look good in the books, in the years to come. But today it is weighted by what might have been. This is an NIT on the way down.
Still, it's a good sign that the guys voted to go, to get back on that plane, back on the road. It says they still want to play. You don't turn around and make that trip again if your heart isn't in it. Can the Rainbows beat UNLV? They can. They could have beaten everyone on the schedule. They just didn't.
Elsewhere, throughout the land, Cinderellas will show up at the ball, beautiful in pumpkin coaches. The Rainbows arrived exhausted, shuffling off that transpacific flight once more. It's past midnight for them. The NIT always is.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com