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This win was a horse
of a different color

IT counts. A win is a win. A win is a win and a horse is a horse. Unless of course the horse of course is a talking horse like the famous Mr. Ed.

But wins, unlike horses, are all pretty much the same when you put them in black and white. They're all beautiful. Either you win or you lose. Last night, Hawaii won. Of course.

It wasn't really that pretty. This one was especially short on chicken skin.

San Jose State is, to put it kindly, not very good. The Spartans shot 18 percent in the first half, and that looks pretty much the way you might imagine it does.

So Hawaii was not pushed to greatness. The Rainbows did not achieve greatness, last night. What they did was win.

That's good.

That's great.

"I thought we came out to play as well as we have all year long," Riley Wallace said.

"The main thing is we were just working as a team tonight," Julian Sensley said.

We really don't know yet if they're back in the form they started the year with -- in which they won eight in a row and had several of us using words like "special."

In which individuals, as Sensley pointed out, had clutch efforts and great games.

Then they went out on the road and promptly lost two straight.

So last night was important.

They needed to get it back, find themselves again, re-establish everything. I don't know if that's happened. Yet. Hawaii won, of course. The Rainbows held SJSU to a record-low point total in the first half.

But the word "special" just wasn't there.

Even when UH had four dunks in a row, you didn't get that sense.

That's OK.

What we do know is they took care of business. And in basketball, those two qualities are equally important, if not intertwined. (Pop quiz: In football, why is Boise State special? Because it takes care of business.)

"It was fun to watch," Wallace said, "as a coach, even."

"We were talking out there, we were switching, helping each other out, bailing each other out," Sensley said.

They took care of business, and pounded San Jose State. Pounded 'um.

They needed to get a Western Athletic Conference win -- all week, Wallace told them, "I'm going to treat you like losers until you win" -- and they did.

The game itself wasn't pretty (it may have looked best, felt most inspiring, in those final, garbage-time minutes).

Doesn't matter. Special can come later. What they needed was this. Not every win is a Mr. Ed.