By Paul Honda
paul@hondareport.com
Monday, Feb. 26, 2007

In lieu of essays of triumph and defeat in the wake of the Kaimuki-Punahou boys basketball epic, i.e. the state championship game, I've been busy, busy, busy with other tasks.

Wrestling, for example. Hoku Nohara (Kamehameha) and Carla Watase (Iolani) owning the mat at the ILH championships. Coaching my nephew's Bronco basketball team (a 19-18 overtime thriller). Working the worldwide web for the final boys hoops Top 10 of the season.

Then, with my fried (and seasoned) brain, I finally returned to the night of lore. In my follow-up piece about Kaimuki's first state title since 1993, I left almost no stone unturned. It was all about Kaimuki, I know, I know.

There will be space soon enough for a McKinley epilogue, along with a few other notes. The vibe I get from OIA Red East coaches is absolutely the same one they imparted during the season. They all maintained that the East was a beast. Didn't need to tell me this. But the success of the East teams in the state tourney — Kalaheo was a solid third, Moanalua went to the fifth-place game — validated the coaches' sensibilities.

Did everyone really expect both Iolani and Saint Louis to get knocked out in the quarterfinals? When was the last time only one ILH team was in the semis? There have been, to the disdain of OIA coaches and players, many years when three of the four semifinalists were from the ILH.

The flip side of all that private-school dominance, of course, is that the Stan Sheriff Center in is in the heart of ILH country. Attendance is fantastic when there are more ILH teams in the final rounds. That's worth a closer look another time.

There are fans out there who love the Bulldogs, even fans from other schools. Then, there are fans who can do without the celebrations, the bravado, the "taunting," as one e-mail writer noted. I don't agree with that assertion, but I definitely understand where it comes from.

As a former age-group and intermediate league official, it's all about control. The byproduct of a well-officiated game is a minimizing of safety risk. In the Kaimuki-Punahou game, the physicality of both teams was clearly a focal point. Regardless of whether fans like the officiating or not, the officials got what they wanted in terms of contact and advantage-disadvantage.

When you have 6-foot-7, 6-4, 6-3 kids going at it, kids in the 200- to 255-pound range, it's a different game. It's far different from a matchup of smaller teams with kids in the 120-pound range, and believe me, we have those kids in every league.

As for any claim of taunting, it's like this: some players expect the contact, both in a state-championship game and in a crazy, intense pickup game. In the latter, sometimes words are exchanged, dished out like worthless currency, and someone gets hurt really badly. In the former, the intensity is just as high, but there is no desire to turn words into negative action.

Why? As hard as the teams played, there is respect. It doesn't look like a happy-go-lucky respect, but it is there. Kaimuki is a team that won when it played with passion and struggled when the intensity lacked. The passion was there in the post-season, and no other team was able to match that level, not even Punahou.

Yes, it takes a little more than emotion and determination to win a title, but if you add those elements to skill, you have the potential making of a champion.

Punahou would have beaten the Bulldog team of mid-January. Punahou was steady, a core stock, a long hold, a utility-based corporation that paid nice dividends. Kaimuki was a roller-coaster stock, loaded with high expectations, missed numbers and unpredictable earnings. In the end, though, they had stability at the top, creative strategy and complete focus on the ultimate goal.

They were amazing to watch, the best free-throw shooting team in the state tourney. This was clearly the year of the Free Throw. Some of the best teams in the state faltered at the line when it mattered most. OIA teams are notorious for horrible foul shooting; there was one that missed 41 free throws in a nonconference game last year.

Kaimuki is such an anomaly, with its 21-for-27 accuracy, with its diamond-and-one defense and unique pressbreaker, the tone and trend for future state contenders from the OIA could be altered in the minds of the next generation. There are young hoopsters out there who saw that game on TV, who know that there is merit to working on fundamentals — ballhandling, free throws, looking for an open teammate — and trusting your coaches. The point is hammered home especially for public-school kids.

More soon about McKinley and the rest of the state tourney. Then it's on to the All-State/Fab 15 ballots. Who's your No. 1 player? Coach?

Not easy, not at all.

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