A lot changed in 24 hours, and it had everything to do with Punahou’s grit.
The Buffanblu bounced back from a loss to ‘Iolani in the ILH playoff tournament title game on Friday to edge the Raiders on Saturday, 45-40, at ‘Iolani’s gym, to capture the league championship.
It was a crazy, loud night at the Raiders’ gym, but Punahou got four key free throws in the final 29.9 seconds by Hunter Hosoda, who had been scoreless to that point. Chris Kobayashi led Punahou with 17 points. Hugh Hogland led ‘Iolani with 16 points, five rebounds and three blocks, and Justin Genovia added 12 points. More in Sunday’s Star-Advertiser and here on Hawaii Prep World.
ILH’s 1st round/2nd round system is so flawed. No league should have its top teams playing big games 5 or 6 times in the week before the State tournament. When you have three teams tied for first place in the first round, the ILH champ should be the one out of those three who wins the second round – skip the 1st round mini-playoff, draw straws for 2nd round seeding. As far as last night’s ILH championship, Punahou won the games they needed to win, but the luck of the draw really helped their path and really did Maryknoll in. Iolani gets into States, but what a horrendous stretch of games.
They should have done what they used to do. ILH Champ is the team with the best regular season record. That team gets the ILH’s first automatic berth and one of the 4 HHSAA Seeds and byes.
The remaining teams get seeded based on regular season record and play an elimination game. The last team standing gets the ILH’s second berth into the HHSAA Tourney.
This year it would have looked like this:
ILH Champ – Punahou
ILH 2nd Place Tourney:
Iolani vs. (winner of STL vs. Mid Pac)
Maryknoll vs. Kamehameha
Winner or the two games above plays for the 2nd berth.
If Iolani didn’t have to play so many games, they would have taken the ILH championship. Punahou was just lucky that they drew the best card in the 3-way tie. The ILH scheduling is flawed. And they wa they had their tournament? Too many games. You ain’t helping your schools any heading into this week’s state championship.