After losing twice in Hawaii last week, the UAA men's basketball team needed a bounce-back game. And what better way to rebound than to rebound?
The Seawolves destroyed BYU-Hawaii on the boards Friday night at the Alaska Airlines Center to win their first game this season against a fellow Division II team.
UAA held the Seasiders to 17 rebounds — including six in the second half — to coast to a 75-50 win on the first day of the two-day Seawolf Jamboree. In Friday's other game, Cal State-LA defeated UAF 74-68.
"After last week, it feels good to get back in the win column," said UAA coach Rusty Osborne, whose team opened the season with two blowout wins over Portland Bible before the losses in Hawaii.
The Seawolves snared 47 rebounds, an effort that included 12 from Corey Hammell, eight from Connor Devine and seven from Suki Wiggs.
They limited BYU-Hawaii to three offensive rebounds — Hammell alone had seven — while giving up the sixth-fewest boards in school history.
"We had a size advantage in there, and Corey's a great offensive rebounder," Devine said. "Everybody was crashing really hard."
UAA (3-2) established its dominance on the boards immediately when Devine scored the game's first points on a putback. The Seasiders (0-2) finished with seven more fouls than rebounds and as many turnovers as rebounds.
The game lacked flow and dragged at points, including the opening four minutes of the second half when neither team managed to score.
But UAA enjoyed some good moments. In a 7-0 run that opened up a double-digit lead during a 90-second span in the first half, the Seawolves converted consecutive turnovers into a driving bucket by Diante Mitchell and a reverse layup by Devine, and then Hammell added a traditional 3-point play when he grabbed an offensive rebound, drew a foul while scoring and added the free throw.
That gave UAA a 29-17 lead, and the Seasiders never got closer than 10 points after that.
This is the final year for athletics at BYU-Hawaii, which has a 16-player roster loaded with young players — seven freshmen and four sophomores.
Tanner Nelson, a 6-3 sophomore, led the team with 18 points.
UAA's roster includes seven senior and three juniors, but the team isn't the finely tuned instrument you might expect.
The Seawolves had assists on only half of their 24 baskets, they committed 18 turnovers and they shot 38.2 percent in the first half (13 of 34) before turning things around with a 57.9 percent effort (11 of 19) in the second half.
The team is a work in progress, Osborne said. Last season's all-conference point guard, Brian McGill, is gone, some new players have arrived — including Devine, a 6-foot-10 senior who transferred from South Dakota State for his final season — and many of the returning players have moved into bigger roles than a year ago.
"It's easy to think we can take off where we left off," Osborne said. "But we designed things around Brian's strengths. We're bringing Connor into the mix, we're bringing Gus (Simmers) into the mix.
"It was a little hit-and-miss there, but when we did things we worked on (at practice), we had some good opportunities."
Hammell scored 10 points for a double-double, Wiggs got untracked after a slow start to finish with 21 points and Devine made good use of his hook shot to score 17.
UAA's bench was good for 20 points and 13 rebounds. Damien Fulp, a sophomore from Colony High, scored 10 points; Simmers, who starred in high school for Anchorage Christian and redshirted last season, had eight points and Sjur Berg, who was injured most of last season, grabbed five rebounds. Travis Parrish contributed three assists and a steady presence, and Curtis Ryan provided a nice spark when he entered the game late in the first half.
UAA led 29-19 when Ryan, a 6-9 redshirt freshman from Australia, came off the bench. His putback made it 31-19 and a couple of possessions later his steal set up a basket by Wiggs that made it 33-21.
Osborne said Ryan is talented but inexperienced. Tendinitis shelved him for 15 months while in high school, and "he's barely played the last three years," Osborne said. "This was his best performance."
The Seawolves are back at the Alaska Airlines Center on Saturday for a 4 p.m. game against Cal State-LA. At 2 p.m., BYU-Hawaii faces UAF.
Seawolf Jamboree
Friday's results
UAA 75, BYU-Hawaii 50
Cal State-LA 74, UAF 68
Saturday's games
2 p.m. — UAF vs. BYU-Hawaii
4 p.m. — UAA vs. Cal State-LA