Jesse Nakanishi's gambit nearly paid off.

The Hawaii Pacific basketball coach bet that if his Sharks brought a hard double on Hawaii's productive center, Tanner Christensen, all night in the Stan Sheriff Center, the Rainbow Warriors' guards would not do enough to make them pay, especially if the Sharks were able to contest enough outside shots.

Division II HPU succeeded in the first part; it held UH to eight points in the paint. However, the Rainbow Warriors made the most of a number of open looks — they hit 15 3-pointers on 31 attempts — the swing factor in a tight 67-63 victory for the home team in front of 1,816 people (4,089 tickets issued) on Tuesday night. Guard Kody Williams was especially impactful as he scored a career-high 24 points with a 7-for-8 performance on 3s, and UH sweated out a single-possession game in the final minute.

Nakanishi, a former UH men's basketball staff member, said his group had fully expected to win, which would've been the first in the series since 1985.

"Proud of our guys. They stuck with our game plan, made sure they weren’t going to beat us inside," Nakanishi told Spectrum News in a postgame phone interview. He noted UH was shooting 60% on 2-pointers and just 29% on 3-pointers coming into the game.

"We were going to make the guards beat us," Nakanishi said. "And we stuck to it and we forced (Christensen) into kicking it out. ... But the uncontested 3s they made, they rose to the occasion and hit shots."

Williams was held scoreless in a loss to then-No. 10 North Carolina on Friday but had a different energy.

"I think he took on the challenge," UH coach Eran Ganot told Spectrum Sports' Scott Robbs in a postgame interview. "He ignited us."

UH improved to 5-1 heading into its first road trip of the season to Grand Canyon and Long Beach State next week.

The Sharks outdid the Rainbow Warriors in the first half, leading by as many as nine points and taking a 38-33 lead into the break. But UH held HPU scoreless for the first 3:48 coming out of intermission, and Williams sank four 3s in the first six minutes of the period. Gytis Nemeiksa and Ryan Rapp added triples for a 54-44 UH lead.

Williams told the Spectrum Corner Crew after the game that the team's preparation for HPU coming off of the North Carolina game was "soft."

"We gotta wake up. If certain guys don’t want to play, then it’s next man up," Williams said. "It’s a real wake up call to the people hwo didn’t bring it today. You gotta bring it every day.

"Every interisland game is very scrappy, very gritty, very dirty. I think we looked over them a little bit today."

Ganot said the Sharks "completely outplayed us in the first half."

"Proud of our group for responding better in the second half and looking forward to continuing to grow from this," he added.

Nemeiksa scored 13 points with eight rebounds and Rapp had 12 points. Williams, Rapp (4-for-5) and Nemeiksa (3-for-6) combined to hit all but one of UH’s 3s.

However, the Sharks had a response as Sherman Brashear (22 points) hit back-to-back 3s.

Jonas Visser scored on a drive with 36 seconds left to get HPU within 62-61.

UH called timeout with 30.5 seconds left. Coming out of a timeout, Nakanishi, a former UH staff member, elected to foul with a roughly seven-second difference between shot and game clock.

"I made a decision, there was a difference of seven seconds. If they shoot it at the very end of that, if we get the rebound — they’re a very good rebounding team — but if we get the rebound we’re probably left with four to five seconds, have to go full court," Nakanishi said. "I just thought I wanted to extend the game instead of doing that, so we took the foul."

UH’s Marcus Greene hit two free throws and HPU’s Charlie Weber threw a bad pass at the other end.

The Sharks (2-3) had to play the foul game from there and UH held on, as it did against Division II foes Hawaii Hilo and Chaminade in closely contested preseason exhibitions on Neighbor Islands.

A game after UH outrebounded North Carolina by 13, HPU won the rebounding battle by one. The Sharks, who could count the game as an exhibition, were coming off three losses on the continent by a combined 14 points.

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