Snowstorm delays
’Bows’ arrival
in Reno

The Hawaii basketball team was literally left out in the cold yesterday.

The Rainbow Warriors left Fresno, Calif., yesterday morning for what was expected to be a 5-hour bus ride to Reno for tomorrow's Western Athletic Conference game against Nevada.

Some 12 hours later, they were still on a snowy highway in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

"It's crazy up here. There's so much snow and it's so cold outside," UH senior guard Jake Sottos said via cell phone during a rest stop.

"I don't know if I've ever seen it like this. There's a lot of snow on the ground and it's still coming pretty hard. It's kinda cool actually. I haven't seen snow in a while."

A day after suffering their first loss of the season, the Rainbows players, coaches and support staff boarded the bus at 10 a.m. Fresno time only to find the highway to Reno closed due to the weather. Even when the highway opened again a snowstorm slowed traffic to a crawl through the mountains.

They were expected to finally pull into Reno close to midnight.

Although the snow delayed UH's arrival, it wasn't the most harrowing traveling experience in Riley Wallace's tenure as head coach. He recalled a 1997 trip to Wyoming when the team's bus was involved in a crash.

"All the windows came flying through and we were off the side of the road," Wallace said. "We didn't get into the hotel until 3 or 4 in the morning and we won both games at Colorado State and Wyoming. We figure we'll take the positive out of this and this is going to be a good omen."

The Rainbows played at Fresno State on Wednesday and with an extra day between games they chartered a bus to Reno rather than fly.

"We had the two days, so we figured we'd just do the bus," Wallace said. "It's actually faster (than flying) if you don't run into this."

Fortunately for the 'Bows, Gabe Watson, the team's Director of Operations, had picked up sandwiches for the traveling party before departing Fresno in anticipation of delays during the drive. The team stopped at a Burger King later in the trip.

The Rainbows missed their scheduled practice time last night, and have a workout today to prepare for the Wolf Pack, the defending WAC champions.

UH has never won at Nevada, and is coming off a heartbreaking 79-78 loss to Fresno State on Wednesday to fall to 8-1 overall and 0-1 in WAC play.

"They'll be all right," Wallace said. "They were down this morning, but they'll be all right tomorrow."

During their trek, the players killed time by watching movies, studying tape of a Nevada game and creating their own diversions, including a snowball fight during their break.

"A lot of us are sleeping, we were playing some Texas Hold 'Em poker, telling jokes and stuff. It's a good bonding experience for all of us," Sottos said. "We'll always remember this trip."