PORTLAND, Ore. — In a spectacular display of NBA-level athleticism, No. 4 seed Arkansas soared past the No. 13-seeded University of Hawai’i men’s basketball team, 97-78, Thursday in an NCAA Tournament West Region first round game.
A highly entertained crowd of 12,104 in the Moda Center watched AP First Team All-America point guard Darius Acuff, Jr., score a game-high 24 points and dish seven assists and Meleek Thomas add 21 points and eight rebounds as the Razorbacks improved to 27-8 and advanced to Saturday’s second round game against No. 12 seed High Point, which upset No. 5 seed Wisconsin earlier on Thursday.
Dre Bullock scored a team-high 21 points for the Warriors, who ended their Big West Conference championship season at 24-9.
Arkansas needed less than seven minutes after tipoff to show why it is the Southeast Conference champ and ranked No. 14 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 poll. The Razorbacks appeared one step quicker and jumped at least six inches higher than the Warriors, who were left to watch Arkansas soar to a commanding 20-4 lead by scoring on a stunning assortment of high-flying alley-oop slam dunks, 3-point shots and dazzling but graceful straight-line drives and finishes at the rim.
Defensively, the Razorbacks blocked shots, altered shots, made steals, intercepted passes and forced the pace as UH rimmed out shot after shot from close and afar.
“They’re great athletes, that’s what we expected while we were here, we watched film on them,” said Warriors center Isaac “Big Fish” Johnson. “But we know at the end of the day, two points is two points. So it wasn’t necessarily a shock factor from the level that they were at. It’s just that we didn’t execute to the point that we should have, allowing them to get easy buckets like that. And so not that we were taken aback or shy from what was happening, it was just basketball.”
Bullock said knowing how athletic Arkansas would be, UH should have made a quicker adjustment.
“We weren’t surprised, coaches did a good job prepping us for scout, we saw their film, they can really fly and get out there, they’re fast, credit to them, they’re talented,” Bullock said. “But we just gotta do a better job preparing those first five or six minutes. We just started out on a bad note, just gotta learn and grow from it. Credit to them.”
More details to come.