Box Score HONOLULU – Whenever the Chaminade University and Hawai'i Pacific men's basketball teams meet at HPU's home floor at Moanalua High School Gym, there's high certainty that the game will go down to the wire. Saturday was no exception.
For the third consecutive year, the CUH-HPU meeting at MoHS Gym came down to the final minutes with the Silverswords getting a big win over their in-city rival.
Lee Bailey, who missed 18 shots in the first 39 minutes of the game, didn't miss his 19
th attempt as he buried a jumper from the left baseline with 1:07 left, breaking a tie game and sending Chaminade to an 83-82 win over HPU in a Pacific West Conference game.
The victory vaulted the Silverswords (8-6, 5-1) past the Sea Warriors (10-3, 5-2) into third place in the PacWest standings, a half-game behind Dixie State.
HPU had a chance to win it at the end, but
Kevin Hu deflected Justin Long's pull-up jumper with two seconds left.
Kuany Kuany, the reigning two-time Hawai'i Tourism Authority PacWest Freshman of the Week, may be making his claim for three-peat, pouring in a season-high 28 points on 10-of-13 shooting from the floor. Fellow freshman
Kiran Shastri hit four 3-pointers on-route to a 17-point performance.
Senior forward
Tyree Harrison also contributed with his second double-double of the year with an 11-point, 11-rebound game while missing only one of his six field goal attempts on the night. Bailey contributed with 13 points.
Darry Jones, Jr. led the Sea Warriors with 21 points while reigning HTA PacWest Defensive Player of the Week, Farbod Farman, had 15 points and 14 boards.
The 'Swords led by as many as 10 midway through the first half at 23-13 before the Sea Warriors chipped away, grabbing their first lead of the game at 42-41 on a Jones, Jr. layup with 1:33 left in the stanza. Bailey and Kuany both hit 3s as Chaminade grabbed a 47-44 halftime lead.
The second half saw the lead change hands four times in the opening minutes, but an 11-0 HPU run would give the home team its largest lead at 63-56 with 12:50 remaining in the game. Trailing by seven with 7:47 left, CUH went on a 14-4 run, culminated by Kuany's 3-point play, giving Chaminade the lead for the first time since early in the second half at 79-76 with 5:09 remaining.
Long drove in for a layup, putting HPU ahead, 81-79, with 3:39 remaining, but Harrison's layup 13 seconds later tied it at 81, setting up Bailey's heroics.
Chaminade hit 40.3 percent of its shots (27-of-27) while HPU was 46.9 (30-of-64). The 'Swords, among the nation's leaders in 3-pointers made eight from long range, despite not making a single one in the second half. The Sea Warriors made 7-of-20 from downtown and outrebounded CUH, 42-39. The 'Sword were also 21-of-29 from the foul line was HPU was 15-of-19.
The Silverswords' intra-O'ahu "road" trip continues Tuesday when they travel to Laie and face BYU-Hawai'i. Tipoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. and live streaming audio will be available on goswords.com.
