Box Score HONOLULU – The Dominican University of California men's basketball team will have a free day between games on Sunday in Hawai'i.
The Penguins will probably spend the time working or thinking about free throw shooting. They made only eight of 24 foul shots on Saturday night and despite taking 15 more field goal attempts they suffered a 64-52 loss to Hawai'i Pacific University in a Pacific West Conference game, ending their four-game winning streak.

Sophomore Haysbert had a game-high 16 points and career-best six rebounds and junior Derek Ober chipped in with 13 points and eight rebounds, both career-highs, but Dominican (7-16/6-6) couldn't recover from large deficits in the second half despite repeated tries and bowed to the Sea Warriors (8-12, 3-9).

“We couldn't get over the hump and that's because we couldn't make free throws. It's the same story all year,” said Head Coach Booker T. Harris. “It's long road trip. We just move on.”

Dominican, which is ninth in the 10-team league in free throw shooting percentage, trailed by 11 points early in the second half but managed to close to within five, thanks to a pair of assists by Xander McNally, who had a game-high seven dishes in the game. McNally, who entered this week as the nation's leader in steals in NCAA Division II, also had a game-best six steals, three in the first 13 minutes of the game. But Adam State's Jamiko Verner, who recorded 10 steals in back-to-back games this weekend, has regained the top spot in D-II in steals with 82 in 20 games, five more than McNally.

The Penguins had the ball with a chance to cut the HPU lead to two or three, but junior center Jacob Noisat committed a turnover with 16:02 to play. Noisat, the team's leading scorer and rebounder, did not score in two field goal attempts and grabbed only one rebound in 27 minutes.

The Sea Warriors built their advantage back up to 14 points, 44-30, with 12:16 to go yet Dominican made another run. The Penguins could have narrowed the lead to five with 5:55 to go but Jammall Clark missed a pair of foul shots. He finished with 14 points.

It was a seven-point game, 51-44,following a Haysbert jumper with 3:34 remaining, but HPU, which shot 56 percent from the floor in the contest to Dominican's 38 percent, tallied 10 consecutive points to put the game out of each.

The Penguins never led all evening. They fell behind 6-0 and 8-2 in the opening minutes to put themselves in a quick hole in the first half. However, they bounced back to tie the game on three occasions. Freshman Dartanyon Meggs nailed a 3-pointer to make it 10-10, Haysbert knotted it at 13-13 with a jumper and a Clark jumper followed by an Ober trey tied the contest at 20.

Dominican had a chance to take its first lead of the game, but Ricky Wofford missed two free throws with 2:53 remaining before intermission. The Penguins, in fact, missed eight of 10 tries from the foul line in the first half.

The Sea Warriors took advantage of that, finishing the half on a 9-0 run.

The Penguins' Hawai'i swing concludes with games on Monday, February 13 at Chaminade University, at BYU-Hawaii on Thursday, February 16 in Laie on the island of Oahu, and then Saturday, February 18 at Hawai'i-Hilo on the Big Island.