Box Score HONOLULU, Hawaii — The Dominican University of California men's basketball team headed to Hawaii with its destiny in its own hands. After a 73-63 loss to Hawai'i Pacific at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center on Tuesday night, Dominican will need some help making it back to the PacWest Championships.
The Penguins, who entered a half game ahead of HPU in the PacWest standings, now stands a half game back of the Sharks (11-9). Dominican will now need to win both remaining regular season games against Chaminade and UH Hilo, plus will need last-place Holy Names (1-17) to play spoiler against HPU on Saturday, Feb. 28.
Dominican looked playoff bound in the early minutes.
Dominique Taplin scored Dominican's first five points and had two three-pointers early. The Penguins led by seven points less than three minutes into play.
Matt Hayes' three-pointer gave Dominican its largest lead of the game, 31-22, at 7:34 in the first half. Dominican led for 15 mintues but HPU answered with an 8-0 run over the final five and a half minutes to even the score 34-34 by halftime.
Colfax Nordquist started the second half with back-to-back layups that gave the Sharks the lead for good.
Mathew Lipski scored five consecutive points to pull the Penguins within a point, 43-42, with 13 minutes to go but Dominican fouled, then allowed a Justin Long three pointer to see the lead slip back to five. HPU pushed its lead to 11 and went 13-of-15 at the free throw line over the final three minutes to offset any comeback attempt.
After going 11-of-25 (44 percent) in the first half, the Penguins shot just 26.7 percent (8-of-30) over the final 20 minutes. Dominican had 10 three-pointers in the game, seven of which came in the first half. Dominican edged the Sharks in the rebound column but committed 17 turnovers, which HPU converted into 20 points.
Despite fouling out with three minutes to go, Taplin recorded his fifth double-double of the season — 21 points and 11 rebounds — to pace the Penguins. In doing so, he moved past
Connor Haysbert to become the program's top rebounder in the Division II era with 440 and counting. Hayes added 14 points on three three-pointers and pulled down eight rebounds.
Christopher Schwartz-Edmisten added 13 points in the loss.
Long scored a game-high 28 points for the Sharks. Nordquist added 10 points and grabbed a team-high six rebounds.
Dominican heads to Chaminade on Thursday, Feb. 26 and to UH Hilo on Satuday, Feb. 28 for a pair of must-win games. Game time against the Silver Swords is slated for 9:30 p.m. Pacific.
