Warrior Insider

The main focus of the Hawaii basketball team will be to take care of business on its next road trip. But there will also be a side view on family and friends.

The Warriors will depart Honolulu on Friday morning, December 2, for Los Angeles. Hawaii will play at Pepperdine on Saturday, and then at Pacific on Tuesday, December 6.

Four Warriors on the trip are from the Southern California area, so the trip will serve as a homecoming of sorts for Brandon Jawato, Garrett Jefferson, Bobby Miles and Trevor Wiseman.

“It’s like a homecoming game for us,” said sophomore forward Trevor Wiseman, who is from Santa Clarita. “It should be very fun. We’re going to be hyped for the game.”

The Pepperdine campus is about a 30-minute to one-hour drive away for the families of those four players.

“I’m expecting too many,” said sophomore guard Bobby Miles, who is from Los Angeles. “I don’t even have tickets for some of them. They’re going to have purchasing … it’ll be like a good 20 to 25 (people), maybe.”

Hawaii head coach Gib Arnold said he wanted to schedule at least one team from the Southern California area so that the families could visit.

“When I recruited the guys, I promised them that we’d get you back and have play in front of your family and friends, so this game is mostly for them,” Arnold said. “It’ll be two-fold. One is the basketball part, and the second part is we get to see a lot of family and friends.”

Arnold said the team will spend Sunday in Southern California so that the players can have an extra day in the area before heading north to Stockton for the game against Pacific.

Arnold is a former assistant coach at Pepperdine, so he will have a bunch of friends at the game as well. “I think we’ll have a good cheering section,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll have a few hundred there between our Southern California guys and the friends we have in the area.”