HONOLULU — Shaka Smart stepped up to the postgame interview dais at the Stan Sheriff Center, smiled, took a seat and offered a universally known Hawaii hand motion that shares his given name.
Yes, Shaka threw a shaka.
The Marquette basketball coach was feeling loose after his fourth-ranked Golden Eagles stormed back against UCLA with 17 unanswered second-half points and survived, 71-69 on Monday, to earn a marquee matchup with No. 1 Kansas in Tuesday’s Allstate Maui Invitational semifinals. Tipoff is at 5:30 p.m.
The Maui Invitational was moved to Oahu for the 40th edition of the prestigious early season tournament while Lahaina, its longtime home, slowly begins to recover from the Aug. 8 wildfires that destroyed much of the town.
Marquette, with notable alumnus Dwyane Wade occupying a courtside seat, and blue-blood UCLA provided a worthy capper on an entertaining Day 1 of the stacked event that includes five teams ranked the top 11.
“Aloha, everybody. It's great to be here in Hawaii. What an incredible field,” Smart said. “We've been looking forward to this event for a long, long time. A couple years ago we played UCLA and we didn't belong on the same floor with them.”
Bruins forward Adem Bona threw down a pair of vicious dunks over Marquette players and the 6-foot-10 sophomore from Nigeria scored on a drive for a one-point UCLA lead with under a minute left. But Marquette sophomore Sean Jones hit the go-ahead 3-pointer with 36 seconds left and the Eagles snuffed out the Bruins’ last looks.
The Eagles were fired up by a strong fan contingent that made the trip from Wisconsin, as well as a very visible appearance by recent Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Wade, the former Miami Heat great who has taken it upon himself to mentor the team.
“He doesn't have to do this. He doesn't have to be in our locker room giving us words of wisdom, talking about out-of-bounds plays, stuff like that, so it's special, it's really special,” said forward David Joplin, who led Marquette with 19 points on five 3-point hits.
Marquette big man Oso Ighodaro matched Bona’s highlight reel with a couple emphatic stuffs of his own to thrill the Sheriff crowd of a few thousand.
“That was a heck of a fight between those two guys,” Smart said. “Bona is a real load physically. The officials for the most part let those guys fight it out. It was like MMA down there, which that's how it is in the Big East.”
The Eagles (4-0) found themselves teetering before an Ighodaro jam seemed to wake everyone up and they went from 12 down to five up in the span of four minutes.
Marquette has never won the Maui Invitational. The closest it came was a loss to Duke in the 2007 final.
Guard Sebastian Mack led Mick Cronin’s Bruins with 25 points as he converted all 13 of his free-throw attempts. The Bruins fell into a noon matchup Tuesday against Division II host Chaminade, which lost to Kansas by 27.
UCLA (3-1) has finally moved on from the nucleus of Tyger Campbell, Jaime Jaquez and Johnny Juzang that reached the 2022 Final Four, but Cronin’s young group has the Bruins just outside the top 25.
“We got rattled offensively,” Cronin said of Marquette’s big run. “It took us … too long to get our composure back. That's where you don't have a veteran guy to calm – even though Adem's a great player, he's still a sophomore. So that showed right there.”
UCLA, the 2006 Maui champ, is competing in the event for the last time as a Pac-12 member. The Bruins will join the Big Ten after this season.
Zach Edey is more than just a 7-foot-4 behemoth.
The reigning Naismith Player of the Year showcased a deft touch around the basket and from the free-throw line in Monday’s first-round Maui Invitational victory over the Bulldogs, scoring 25 points with 14 rebounds and three blocked shots to help his team advance into Tuesday’s 3 p.m. semifinal against No. 7 Tennessee.
He was 8-for-16 from the field and 9-for-10 from the line. Five of his boards were on the offensive end.
Edey and the Big Ten’s Boilermakers (4-0) were memorably knocked out in the first round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament by pesky Fairleigh Dickinson, which became the second No. 16 team to take out a 1.
“It took me awhile last year to kind of figure out how to play with him because I'm used to 6-2, 6-3 guys,” said Purdue guard Braden Smith, who had 13 points, six assists and five of his team’s nine steals. “Paints (coach Matt Painter) was on me for that for a very, very long time. But now that I finally figured it out, just kind of letting him work.”
The Bulldogs (2-1) of the West Coast Conference scored 14 straight early and took a nine-point lead late in the first half, only to see Edey single-handedly cut the margin down to five by halftime with a personal run of nine points.
Purdue turned Gonzaga over repeatedly early in the second half, leading to a series of layups and dunks that allowed the Boilermakers to seize control.
“I thought the start of the second half was key for us, getting some transition baskets, getting some steals,” Painter said. “I thought we had some active hands at that time. I think that kind of set the tone for us in the second half.”
Maui veteran Mark Few was denied the opportunity to add to his 2009 and 2018 titles in the event. His team shot 0-for-13 on 3s in the second half.
“I think if you looked at the 3s we took they were all good shots,” Few said. “I think that's how you measure your 3s. I mean, I don't know that we took any bad ones during that stretch. Obviously that was a fairly big factor. … I thought the bigger factor was we just turned the ball over too much (nine times) in the second half.”
Forward Graham Ike, who had to guard Edey most of the game, had 14 points and seven rebounds to lead the Zags.
Gonzaga meets Syracuse in the consolation bracket at 9:30 a.m.
Jonas Aidoo and Josiah James had double-doubles and the Volunteers scored the last 12 points of the game to secure their Maui Invitational semifinal berth.
Dalton Knecht scored a game-high 17 points for Tennessee (4-0) before leaving the game late with apparent cramping.
It was the first loss in the Maui Invitational for Syracuse (3-1), which won Maui titles in 1990, 1998 and 2013 under the legendary Jim Boeheim. His program has passed to Adrian Autry, a former Orange player who has mostly shifted the ACC team out of its longtime, trademark 2-3 zone defense to man-to-man.
The Orange’s leading scorer on the season, guard Judah Mintz, missed his first eight shots Monday before heating up late to score 15, but by then Syracuse was behind.
"It was getting up to the ball screens for me, and we knew he pump fakes a lot to get to the free-throw line, so we were staying disciplined on that part," Aidoo said of guarding Mintz, who came into the game averaging 23 points.
Tennessee’s Zakai Zeigler threw an alley-oop pass to Aidoo for a dunk at the buzzer with the game already decided and Syracuse defense relaxed, causing a minor objection by some Orange players, but the handshake line was civil.
The Volunteers will play No. 2 Purdue in a 3 p.m. semifinal. If they get past the Boilermakers, it will be their first Maui final.
Former University of Hawaii athletic director Herman Frazier was in attendance with the Orange contingent. Frazier is a senior associate AD with the New York school.
Syracuse will face Gonzaga in the 9:30 a.m. consolation game.
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.