UBC Visits Hawaii

UBC T-Birds recently took a trip to Hawaii to play against Hawaii Pacific University which are an NCAA Division 2 program. On January 2nd we played the second game of our Hawaii trip.

Their rules do not allow them to play against foreign teams during the season so for that reason the game was defined as a scrimmage.

I know that several of you were trying to find a webcast but their rules do not permit that for a scrimmage. We played it exactly as a game but they were not allowed to promote the game prior to or after and that’s why they did not have anything up on their website.

We ended up losing the game 74-70 but it was a real good test for us. We played in an old arena that seats 6,000 but was a real character building.

We were down to eight players as Doug Plumb was still out with a hamstring issue, Jared Casey had returned home due to his academic program starting, and Isaiah Solomon had returned home due to his grandmothers passing.

The game started off back and forth and our defense was quite poor.

Our rotations were slow and we allowed too many open looks….that is when we weren’t getting beat back door. They are a very good shooting team that hit for 13 threes in the game.

This made us extend our defenders and made us more vulnerable to the backdoors. However, we were able to hang in and were only down by one at the half.

We started the third quarter very slow and found ourselves down by as many as 12. At the start of the fourth quarter we began a solid comeback. Brylle was tough inside and they could not defend him.

He ended with 28 points and 12 rebounds, but it wasn’t enough as we ended up losing by four. It was the first time in my 13 years at UBC that a freshman has played 40 minutes in a game.

Jordan Jensen-Whyte started at the point guard spot for us and played the entire game. He did a great job for us and his performance certainly helped to give him a lot of confidence moving forwards. He ended with 11 points, six assists, five rebounds, and three steals.

In our third and final game of the trip we played against the Hawaii Selects for the second time. What has happened in the past is that if we defeat them in the first game there is usually quite a different team for the next game.

This time was no exception. There was only four guys for them that had played in the first game and they loaded up with some athletic, big guys.

We played in a great open air facility on the Pearl Harbour Naval Base that was built just before WW II. They said that Elvis Presley had performed there for some of the troops.

It was another great character gym and was a fun environment to play in.

We started the game off well and actually played pretty well throughout. On offense we shared the ball and ran better than we had in the previous two games.

Defensively we did some good things as well. We dominated the glass for the third straight game. Once again we only had the eight players available to play and they all got a great workout.  We won by a score of 79-67.

It was a very successful trip. We practiced real hard, we played three good games, and the team bonding was incredible.

This is a very close team and this trip really helped them to get to know each other better and more importantly to help understand each other better. We arrived back at UBC last night at 7:00 pm and are on the floor again this morning.

This weekend we will travel to Winnipeg to play against the University of Manitoba and University of Winnipeg.

Both of them have played some really good basketball this year and have some very talented veteran players.

We will be back home the following weekend and hope to see you out.