The University of Hawai’i men’s basketball team played hard, but they hit a cold spell just as Maryland went on a run and could never recover.

[Melo] Trimble’s 3-pointer, the first of the game for Maryland after 15 misses, highlighted a 14-0 run that put the Terps ahead 53-41 with just over seven minutes left. Hawaii made just 1-of-13 field goal attempts during Maryland’s run.

The Rainbow Warriors shot only 32.9% for the game, 23 of 70. You can’t be that bad and expect to win against a team like Maryland.

Oh well. They made it to the second round of the tournament for the first time ever, and they put a scare into their opponent in that round. The big question now is how many of the juniors will come back next year knowing that barring a successful appeal the team is banned from the postseason due to the transgressions of Gib Arnold,their coach two years ago.

First, a former director of basketball operations was found to be participating in coaching activities, which Arnold then misled the NCAA about. Second, Arnold found that a player was using a booster’s car and did not report it to his compliance department while also telling the team to keep it in-house. Finally, [former assistant coach Brandon] Akana was found to have altered an admissions form for an international student in order to get him eligible at the university.

You’d have thought that Arnold, who’d been coaching Division 1 basketball for 15 years before he took the UH job, would have known better than to do that kind of thing, and you’d also have thought he’d have managed his assistants so that they wouldn’t do what Akana did. Certainly the University thought that.

What’s even more galling is that Arnold’s father Frank once coached UH basketball for a couple of years and went 11-45 in 1985-1986 before resigning, saying he couldn’t recruit for UH because “In order to win here you have to have J.C. transfers and that doesn’t fit into my recruiting or coaching style.”

I think it’s safe to assume the University will never hire anyone else named Arnold to coach basketball.

First year coach Eran Ganot will be back, and I’m sure he’s trying to keep as many of these players as he can for next year.