Five straight home games coming up for Warriors
Here’s some good news: the University of Hawai’i basketball team is done traveling for the month of January.
The opening road trip of the season did not go as planned last week, as the Warriors returned to Honolulu with a 0-2 record in the Big West Conference. Hawai’i, which is 6-9 overall, fell at Cal State Fullerton (67-64) and at UC Irvine (84-56).
The Warriors will now have the rest of this month to make up for it with an unprecedented five-game conference homestand. It starts this Saturday, when Hawai’i hosts Long Beach State at the Stan Sheriff Center.
That will be followed by home games against CSUN (January 18), UC Davis (January 21), UC Riverside (January 25) and UC Santa Barbara (January 28).
The next road games are February 2 (at UC Riverside) and February 4 (at CSUN).
Since the Warriors started playing a conference schedule in the 1979-80 season, they have never played five consecutive conference games at home. There have been several four-game conference homestands, the last one coming in the 2013-14 season.
At 0-2 in conference games, the Warriors already find themselves in a bit of a hole with 14 conference games remaining. Three teams – CSUN, UC Davis and UC Irvine – are off to 2-0 starts in conference.
If anything, the Warriors can look to take advantage of a Big West trend this season that favors home teams.
In the opening week of conference games, the home teams went 7-1.
Among the opponents coming up for Hawai’i, these are the current road records: Long Beach State (0-11), CSUN (1-4), UC Davis (2-4), UC Riverside (0-9) and UC Santa Barbara (0-6).
Wednesday, January 11
CSUN at Long Beach State
Thursday, January 12
Cal State Fullerton at Cal Poly
UC Irvine at UC Santa Barbara
UC Davis at UC Riverside
Saturday, January 14
Cal State Fullerton at UC Irvine
Cal Poly at UC Santa Barbara
UC Davis at CSUN
Long Beach State at Hawai’i, 7:00 p.m. (Hawai’i time)
I see a good chance for UH to go at least 4-1 with these home games and maybe even 5-0, depending if UC Davis is that good or not. This first game against Long Beach is very winnable because Long Beach playing on Wednesday and UH has the whole week to get ready.This will be a true test for coaches.