After riding high during a two-week, four-game win streak, the University of Hawai’i men’s basketball team got hit hard by the reality of Luke Nelson and UC Irvine late Saturday night, as Nelson scored a game-high 29 points to help the Anteaters race past Hawai’i, 72-58, in a Big West Conference men’s basketball showdown.
A spirited black-clad, “Black-Out” crowd of 7,452 at the Stan Sheriff Center watched Ioannis Dimakopoulos add 11 points and five rebounds as UCI improved to 15-12 overall, 8-3 in the Big West, including a sweep of the regular-season series with Hawai’i.
Gibson Johnson scored 19 points, Noah Allen added 18 points and Sheriff Drammeh contributed 12 points for the Warriors, whose season-high four-game win streak was snapped to fall to 12-12, 6-5.