Warrior Insider

Head coach Gib Arnold found a way to keep the Hawaii basketball team playing hard at the end of a long day of practices. Split the team in two and let them scrimmage.

The Warriors conducted a 20-minute intrasquad scrimmage on Saturday evening that seemed to energize the team after a long double practice day. The Warriors went through a two-and-a-half hour practice in the morning, and then went for another hour later in the day before Arnold surprised the players with the scrimmage.

“I would normally not do that, except for we went hard this morning for a long time,” Arnold said. “To keep them going, they needed to go up and down (the court) a little bit and I thought both teams competed.”

Arnold was a sideline observer for the scrimmage, so that he could take notes on each player

Perhaps not surprisingly, the veteran returnees led the way. Senior guard Zane Johnson and junior center Vander Joaquim led the black jerseys to a 34-32 victory. Johnson and Joaquim each scored 13 points in the scrimmage.

“We had a long preseason, it was pretty intense,” Joaquim said. “So we were ready for something like this. Everybody was playing hard.”

Arnold said that Johnson and Joaquim will serve as the team captains this season.

“It’s a good thing,” Joaquim said. “I just came from my (Angola) national team and I was playing with a lot of older guys and learning a lot. Now I come back here to a much younger team, so I think I can be a leader.”

Joston Thomas led the white jerseys with 12 points. He said the scrimmage was a nice way to cap the long day of two practices.

“We look at it more as fun than anything else,” Thomas said. “And we’re just having fun playing basketball. Hopefully we place good in the WAC at the end of the season and get to the NCAA (Tournament).”