Madut, Hepa help Hawaii rally, beat UC Santa Barbara 65-62

Jan 30, 2022, 06:18 pm

HONOLULU -- — Junior Madut had 16 points and nine rebounds, Kamaka Hepa scored all his 12 points in the second half and Hawaii rallied from a 19-point deficit to beat UC Santa Barbara 65-62 on Saturday night for the Rainbow Warriors' seventh consecutive win.

Hepa hit each of his season-high four 3-pointers during a 19-3 run in the second half. He opened the spurt with back-to-back 3s and added another that made it 44-42 and gave Hawaii Hawaii (11-5, 6-0 Big West) the lead for good before Amoro Lado and Hepa hit 3-pointers 35 seconds apart to stretch the lead to seven points with 6:39 to play.

Ajay Mitchell scored eight of his 16 points from there, including a step-back 3-pointer that pulled the Gauchos to 62-61 with 6.7 seconds left but Noel Coleman — who shot just 2 of 12 from the field — made two free throws and Hepa made 1 of 2 from the foul line to seal it.

UCSB scored 13 consecutive points in a 23-4 run over the first 9 minutes of the game but the Rainbow Warriors scored 12 of the next 13 points before going into halftime trailing 30-19 — Hawaii's lowest scoring half of the season.

Amadou Sow had 13 points and 13 rebounds for UC Santa Barbara (8-8, 1/3 Big West) but shot just 5 of 19 from the field.

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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights, http://www.automatedinsights.com/ap, using data from STATS LLC, https://www.stats.com