The damage was already done.

After the Hawaii men’s basketball team allowed Long Beach State to shoot 75% in the first half at the Walter Pyramid on Thursday night, the Beach did enough to turn back the Rainbow Warriors’ comeback attempt in a 79-71 decision in Long Beach, Calif.

Coach Eran Ganot’s ‘Bows attempted to counter the Beach’s up-tempo attack by hoisting 3-pointers aplenty in the early going. It didn’t work; they trailed by as many as 21 points in the first half and by 22 with under nine minutes to play before UH staged a belated rally to outscore LBSU 22-8 down the stretch.

"It's hard to come back from that kind of deficit," Ganot told Spectrum News in a postgame phone interview. "Disappointed in the last 10 minutes of the first half. That was the worst defense we have played."

A moment later, he clarified that he meant the worst defense of his staff's nine-year tenure at UH.

North Carolina transfer Justin McKoy's offense was one of the few things that went right for UH early on as he hit five first-half 3s and scored 19 of his career-high 22 points in the period.

UH (10-8, 2-4 BWC) matched its worst six-game start in the Big West with the 2016-17 season heading into Saturday’s 2 p.m. Hawaii time contest against UC San Diego (11-7, 5-1), which took its first Big West loss of the season at leader UC Irvine, 76-65, on Thursday.

The Rainbow Warriors’ starting backcourt of JoVon McClanahan and Noel Coleman was limited to six points. The co-captain McClanahan was scoreless in just 14 minutes as he sat the final 16:23.

Beach guard Marcus Tsohonis returned from a one-game absence to score 20 points on 8-for-15 shooting with four assists and no turnovers. Wing Jadon Jones scored 19 on an 8-for-8 night from the field and forwards Aboubacar Traore and Lassina Traore combined for 24 points and 14 rebounds. Aboubacar Traore added seven assists as LBSU assisted on 23 of its 31 field goals against just seven turnovers.

Jones' back-to-back fast-break jams, with the second coming on an alley-oop from Tsohonis for a 34-18 lead, was the game's trademark sequence.

LBSU (12-7, 4-3) worked the ball inside at will over the game’s first 20 minutes and shot 18-for-24 to carry a 45-28 lead into the break. It connected on all three of its long-range attempts, and assisted on 14 of the 18 field goals with just one turnover in the period.

UH, by contrast, hoisted 22 triples in the half and was on pace to set a new program record for attempts in a game. Besides McKoy, who opened the game with three straight makes and ended the half with a buzzer-beater, UH struggled to hit from deep (1-for-12).

It finished with 38 attempts from 3, matching last week’s loss at CSUN for the season high, one shot off the program record set against Washington in 2019.

"The zone (by LBSU), and they give up a lot of 3s," Ganot said in explanation of the shot selection. "I'm surprised by some of them we missed, but then we took a couple in transition and then we played (catch-up). ... We've looked at ways to play inside-out. I thought Bernardo (da Silva) and Mor (Seck) gave us a lift. I thought it was better what we did in the second half. But the lapses and lack of concentration and focus when things aren't going your way is something we're going to have to break through on."

Da Silva and Seck combined for 18 points in the loss.

UH backup forward Akira Jacobs helped launch his team’s comeback effort with two 3-pointers in a little more than a minute and Juan Munoz scored seven of his 12 points over the final 5:29. 

"I thought our guys did a really nice job with the second half," Ganot said. "I thought the ball movement came back and maybe we missed some good looks, but I did like the approach. It's hard to come back from that kind of deficit."

Dan Monson's Beach shot 41.9% in the second half and 56.4% for the game.

Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.