HILO, Hawai`i--With almost as many players in street clothes as in uniform, the short-handed Hawai`i Hilo Vulcans fell to a red-hot Point Loma Sea Lion team on Saturday night at the Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium, 85-62.

The Sea Lions won their 11th game in their last 13 outings to improve to 16-7 on the season and to 10-4 in the Pacific West Conference. The Vulcans, playing without starting guards Trey Ingram and Eric Wattree, dropped their sixth straight to fall to 4-13 on the year and to 3-7 in league action. 

Ingram, the fourth leading scorer in the PacWest (16.8 ppg) missed his second straight game (hand). Wattree missed his first game of the season (illness). Post Devin Johnson was back, but not at 100 percent yet after missing two games last week.

If those challenges were not enough to contend with, the Vulcans had to deal with the Sea Lions, especially a guy named Preston Beverly.

The smooth 6-7 forward had 26 points, eight rebounds and five assists, scoring in a variety of ways--inside, with three dunks and with either hand, and outside, hitting two-of-three trey attempts. He was 11-of-16 overall from the field.

Beverly came off the bench early in the first half and drained a three-pointer to give the visitors a 9-6 lead. UH Hilo's Randan Berinobis answered with his own three-ball (9-9), but the Sea Lions soon countered with a 10-0 run and the Vulcans would not get closer than eight points the rest of the night. PLNU led 42-25 at halftime, with Beverly accounting for 13 of his teams' points. Point Loma had nine more rebounds than UHH in the first 20 minutes and the Vulcans shot just 32 percent from the field in the first half.

Another Berinobis three-pointer midway through the second half cut the deficit to 16 points (62-46), and a Ryley Callaghan trey a few minutes later made it 64-49. But Point Loma responded with back-to-back baskets to push their lead back up to 20 points. Their largest lead of the second half was 25 points.

Johnson and Berinobis had near identical numbers for the Vulcans, Johnson with 14 points and six rebounds, Berinobis with 13 points and six boards. Cleo Cain was in double figures with 11 points. Ryley Callaghan had nine points and four assists, and Jared Roffler led the team in rebounds with seven.

Point Loma shot 56 percent from the field and nailed 11-of-22 three-point attempts--eight of them in the first half.

"I told the guys, this is just like life," head coach GE Coleman said after the game. "Things like injuries happen, you have just keep trying to figure it out. While I have never in all of my years seen anything quite like this, you just have to keep getting up each day and pressing on. We still have a lot of basketball yet to be played."

The Vulcans will continue a three-game homestand with a Thursday hosting of Fresno Pacific. Start time will be 7:30 p.m.