Box Score LAIE, Hawai'i — The Dominican University of California men's basketball team ran into a hot BYU-Hawaii team on a hot-shooting night on Thursday.

Led by All-American Jet Chang, the Seasiders, the 10th ranked NCAA Division II team in the West Region, connected on 62.7 percent of their field goal attempts and held off the Penguins 80-72 in a Pacific West Conference game on the north shore of Oahu. Chang, the league's top scorer, made 11 of 16 shots to net a game-high 29 points, 11 above his season average, and he needed all of them to keep Dominican at bay.

Jammall Clark, who scored 13 of his team-high 17 points in the second half, put the Penguins (8-17/7-7) in the lead, 51-50, with 13:17 left in the game. But that was Dominican's last field goal until Mark Lewis nailed a 3-pointer with 6:13 to go. While the Penguins went more than seven minutes without a basket, BYU-Hawaii (14-8/11-2), the league's second place team and last season's NCAA Div. II tournament runner-up, jumped ahead by nine points and Dominican never got closer than seven.

“We had 11 more shots and three more offensive rebounds, but giving up 80 points is not a recipe for success for us,” said Head Coach Booker T. Harris.

Conversely, the Penguins are 4-0 this season when holding opponents to 62 or fewer points.

It was the Seasiders' seventh win in their last eight games and only the second loss in the last seven games for Dominican.

Jacob Noisat added 14 points for the Penguins, but only one in the second half. Derek Ober contributed 13 points, tying his career-high, and a team-high seven rebounds. Xander McNally had nine points, a game-high six assists, five rebounds and three steals. That gives him one more steal than Adam State's Jamiko Verner, but Verner, who plays Friday and Saturday night, has played one fewer game.

All in all it was a gutty effort by the Penguins considering the white-hot shooting by the host team.

Chang and the Seasiders, who came into the game as the league's highest-scoring team at 75.6 points per game, were shooting at a torrid pace. With 13 minutes left in the game, Chang had 22 points on 9-of-12 shooting and BYU-Hawaii had connected on 66 percent (21-of-32) of its shots as a team.

Yet Dominican was hanging in, trailing by only a point.

“For awhile we matched them basket for basket,” Harris said. “Then we had a couple of turnovers and a couple of quick shots and that kind of hurt our momentum.”

In the first half, Noisat came off the bench and tallied 13 points on 6-of-7 shooting. The Penguins had several three-point leads.  A McNally steal led to a Dartanyon Meggs basket, then McNally's assist on a Clark hoop for a 25-22 advantage.

But Chang, who had 12 points in the first 20 minutes, tied the game with a 3-point play and the Seasiders built their own lead. A Noisat offensive rebound basket tied the game at 30, but the Penguins settled for a one-point deficit, 34-33, at intermission following a driving lay-up by McNally.

That was encouraging for Dominican since BYU-Hawaii shot a blazing 58 percent (15-of-26) from the floor in the first half, yet the Penguins only trailed by a point.

The Penguins conclude their 10-day, four-game PacWest road trip through Hawai'i on Saturday, February 18 when they go to the Big Island to play the University of Hawai'i, Hilo. Game time is 9:30 p.m. Pacific time.