(photo of Jabari Sweet by Rick Ogata)

HILO, Hawai`i--It's hard to beat a good team five times in a row, ask any coach.

All joking aside, the Hawaii Hilo Vulcans answered every strong challenge from visiting Hawaii Pacific, muscling their way to a 73-66 win on Wednesday night at Vulcan Gymnasium. The win was the sixth in a row for the Vulcans, who improved to 8-1 on the season. It was also UHH's third game in five days.

The Sharks saw their two-game win streak stopped, falling to 2-7 on the season. The Pacific West Conference record for both teams is the same as their overall mark.

The Vulcans used their usual recipie of balanced scoring and strong play off the bench to get the win. Pivot Sasa Vuksanovic led UHH with 16 points and six rebounds, followed by Darren Williams with 15 and four assists. Ethan Jetter came off the bench to add 13, and Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones had 12 points and six boards. 

Rodney Hounshell had 16 points to lead the Sharks and Lachlan Viney had 14.

"That was a battle," said Vulcan head coach Kaniela Aiona after the game. "Credit to HPU, they fought and never gave up. We had a different guy answer the call each time that we needed scoring, and our bench did a good job again in playing their role."

The Vulcans built a handful of leads, only to see the Sharks roar back.

In the first half, UHH had a 27-13 margin at the 10-minute mark, but the Sharks cut that lead to seven points at the break (40-33). Hounshell was a perfect 6-for-6 from the floor, including a pair of three-pointers, for 14 points and the Vulcans went cold down the stretch.

That cool streak continued after intermission. It took five and a half minutes for the Vulcans to score, and meanwhile HPU went on a 6-0 run to close the gap to two points. The Sharks would keep the pressure on, tying the game at 13:30 on a three-pointer by Jacob Foy (46-46).

The Vulcans would answer with treys by Williams and Jetter, but HPU would soon creep to within two points again (52-50). But UHH would score the next nine points, six of them by Jetter on three straight possessions. Later in the half, Vuksanovic would score on four straight opportunities to give UHH a 69-56 lead and essentially the game.

"We had a nice scoring punch off the bench with Ethan, and Darren and Sasa did their scoring part as well," Aiona added. 

The two teams will meet for the sixth and final time on Thursday, with tip-off at 3 pm.

"We have to treat tomorrow like the seventh game of a championship," the first-year coach said. "We have to focus on one game at a time. We clinched the Hawaii Pod with this win, but we have bigger aspirations now and we need to keep winning to accomplish those goals."

The Vulcans are one of eight teams in consideration for six spots available in the NCAA West Region tournament. In addition to tomorrow's game against HPU, they have road games at Chaminade on March 5 and 6.

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