UH at CSUB (2/12/26)

No win was bigger than this one! The University of Hawaiʻi Men's Basketball team traveled to the Icardo Center in Bakersfield, California to take on the Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunners for the final time and got the final say, 89-74, on Thursday! Add in that Cal Poly defeated UC Irvine earlier this week, and UH now find themselves on top of the Big West standings! Dre Bullock led a five-pack of double-digit scoring 'Bows with 19 points. Harry Rouhliadeff and Isaac Johnson chipped in 17 apiece. Gytis Nemeikša was next with 12 off the bench, and Isaac Finlinson added 10. Former Long Beach player A.J. George led Bakersfield with 23 points on 10-of-15 shooting. Dailen Smith was not far behind with 20. Ronald Jessamy was the last Roadrunner to crack double-digits with 13. Rouhliadeff scored first with a triple just 18 seconds in! Both UH and Bakersfield were in close proximity through the first eight minutes of the first half! Bakersfield never led by more than three points, but UH was the team that turned the tides first! After several lead changes, Finlinson gave UH the lead for good with a triple at the 13:09 mark! That started a 9-0 UH run and turned a two-point deficit into a 23-16 lead! The Roadrunners tried hard, but UH kept extending its lead. They did not hit a triple in the first half while UH made six of them. At halftime, UH took a healthy lead, 43-32, with Johnson and Bullock leading UH's scoring at 11 each. Bakersfield began the second half with six of the first eight points scored. The gap was down to eight just like that. UH answered the bell then. A Johnson dunk generated a 21-6 run to give UH its biggest lead of 23, 66-43, with under 12 minutes to go; however, Bakersfield did not fold up shop! The Roadrunners used a 16-2 run to cut the gap to just nine, but that was the closest they got! That included their lone triple of the game from Smith. UH did not self-destruct though and got their gap back! That began with a Johnson jumper with 7:04 to go. UH would not look back from then on and won their third consecutive conference game; it was also the eighth time in the last nine meetings that UH came away the winners! UH improves to 10-3 in the Big West standings and 18-5 overall! The 'Bows will wrap up their road trip with a contest at the Premier America Credit Union Arena against the Cal State Northridge Matadors on Saturday, Feb. 14. Tipoff is scheduled for 3 p.m. HST, and you can listen on the radio at ESPN Honolulu.