Hawai’i, brand-new roster look for bounce back in final Big West campaign

HONOLULU – The marathon has begun.

Rocking with a refreshed roster that has been stacked with shooting, basketball IQ and athleticism, the University of Hawai’i men’s basketball team enters the program’s final season in the Big West Conference with eyes on a big bounce back.

The 2024-25 campaign saw the Rainbow Warriors miss the conference tournament for the first time in the decade of head coach Eran Ganot’s leadership. Some of those struggles could clearly be attributed to a team that had been glued together late in the process while others were as simple as too many turnovers and not enough shooting.

“You own it, you address it, and you attack it,” Ganot responded when asked about the lessons learned from last season. “You don’t get [the year] back, that’s life. [The question is] what are we going to do about it? What am I going to do about it? What’s our staff going to do about it?”

Ten players left behind their white-and-green garb as they graduated, transferred to other programs or took the leap into professional basketball. Armed with a mulligan, the UH staff now had an entire roster to refill for the second straight summer.

Hawai’i got a nice boost when freshman point guard Aaron Hunkin-Claytor, who started the final 11 games of last season and flashed the potential to take over the role full-time, announced on social media that he would not be entering his name into the portal and would return to the islands for his sophomore year.

Running it back alongside him originally were Harry Rouhliadeff, who started 17 of the 31 games he appeared in as a junior for the Rainbow Warriors, and AJ Economou, who was the darling of summer workouts at times as he flashed the development from his first two years marinating on the bench. Gytis Nemeikša, who Ganot expects be an all-conference level player after he led Hawai’i in scoring last season, entered his name into the transfer portal as he waited on NCAA approval on a waiver for another year of eligibility before eventually returning to UH for a second year.

“When I started coaching, you probably had 10-12 [players returning] as normal continuity,” Ganot said while discussing the changes to the college landscape. “Now, if you want to have really good continuity, you probably want to have 6-8 … It’s especially harder at the mid-major level, but the excitement is the same.”

New Faces from Different Places

The Rainbow Warriors picked up one player from the high school ranks, adding three-star guard Hunter Carter as the lone prep recruit to the program, and hit the portal HARD with a different urgency and ability to close than one year prior.

Safe to say that no stone was left unturned.

UH’s portal haul added players that got high-major Division I rotation minutes, were mid-major D1 standouts, earned All-American honors while at the nation’s top junior college and a starter from a Division II tournament team.

With the initial transfer trio of Utah products Hunter Erickson, Isaac Johnson and Tanner Cuff, Hawai’i hinted at a plan for piecing together a cohesive roster that attacked some of the most critical issues that plagued the ’24-25 Rainbow Warriors.

Johnson – a 7-foot big man who goes by “Big Fish” – was some key size to reel in after losing both centers from last year’s rotation. He provides notable shooting touch from the outside and rejoins forces in the islands with his high school teammate in Cuff, who spent the past two seasons as the 6-foot-7 “Mr. Do-it-All” guard at Evansville.

Erickson was an athletic spark plug off the bench for Utah last season and gives Hawai’i an experienced option with a quick (and quality) trigger from three. He also has previously built-in chemistry with Cuff, crossing paths with the lanky playmaker for one season at Salt Lake Community College before he bounced back to Power 4 basketball for the past two years.

After getting three rotational players before April began, UH continued to press on the gas pedal to stack the roster with competition and shooting. High-flying guard Dre Bullock, who told fans to “get the popcorn ready” in his first media rounds after committing, and Ike Finlinson, who was the 2025 JUCO National Player of the Year, locked into place next as two players that shot better than 37% from long distance joined the fray.

Isaiah Kerr, who spent the past two years working his way into a large role at Division II’s Chico State, took the next step up and will look to play a role for the Rainbow Warriors right away with a balanced game and underrated 3-point stroke.

A far cry from last year, UH rounded out the roster by the end of June’s first week with forwards Jalen Myers and Yacine Toumi, giving the majority of the team time to get to the islands for summer workouts.

Hawai’i F Yacine Toumi shuffles on defense during his first official practice with the Rainbow Warriors. | Photo Credit: Michael Lasquero, HSRN

That additional time could prove to be critical for the Rainbow Warriors, who now turn the focus to getting nine new players and four returners ready to play as a unit in the six-week window ahead of the November 4 showdown in Eugune against Oregon.

Bullock called the chance to workout during the summer with his new teammates “very useful” ahead of the preseason beginning. The Rainbow Warriors hope those summer hours will shorten the timeline on the learning curve for a new roster as they install the team’s foundation.

“We’re ahead [of last year], but not as much because we still have a lot of new guys,” Ganot said. “It’s been a fun group to work with. We’re not where we want to be yet but we’re certainly better than we were when we started in the summer and when we started the school year.”

Depth, competition and a roster oozing potential of “multiple”

The 2024-25 Rainbow Warriors left plenty of fans desiring more.

Shooting was unimpressive as seven players hoisted 50 or more times from behind the arc last season for UH but only one hit on more than 36% of those attempts. The team played slowly, running at the second-lowest “True Tempo” among all Big West programs with an estimated 67.4 possession per game against an average Division I opponent (via Evan Miyakawa Analytics).

Some of those issues came from just not having the appropriate horses for the race the Rainbow Warriors were running. In an era that favors three-point shooting, fast pace and the best athletes, Hawai’i was built with slashing guards and wings that did their best work inside the arc and little depth on the bench to lean on if games became track meets.

The program owned it, addressed the shortcomings and then attacked the offseason with a much-needed vigor.

While Hunkin-Claytor returns as a high-quality starting option at the point, UH boasts three other legitimate options that can play the 1 or alongside the rising sophomore. Hunter Erickson and Hunter Carter are on different ends of the college experience spectrum, but both have enough experience piloting offenses as the lead guard to give AHC spurts.

Tanner Cuff, a 6-foot-7 guard with multiple seasons of playmaking responsibilities at the college level, provides another starting caliber option with Hunkin-Claytor and gives a different look from a typical point guard.

Hawai’i G Aaron Hunkin-Claytor takes a shot ahead of new teammate Tanner Cuff during UH’s first official practice. | Photo Credit: Michael Lasquero, HSRN

“They’ve been going at it [in practice], they complement each other and they’re a little different,” Ganot said of Hunkin-Claytor/Cuff pairing. “[Cuff] is one of the premier, I think, post-up players in our league. Some similarities to Drew Buggs at times when we put him on the block, a little taller, but he can see over the top of defenses … Maybe we can play them together.”

Nemeikša’s return added a potential all-conference forward to the mix, but he comes back to a room with better competition than a year ago with the tall, tough-minded Jalen Myers, another Big East transfer in Yacine Toumi and four-year forward Harry Rouhliadeff all hoping to earn time.

After getting a taste of a center stretching the floor with Tanner Christensen last year, the Rainbow Warriors grabbed an even sweeter-shooting seven-footer in Isaac Johnson. While “Big Fish” will do plenty of damage down low, his shooting stroke will allow the team to play more inverted than Christensen and Jerome Palm allowed.

The overall roster provides plenty of potential options depending on the way Hawai’i wants to play at any particular moment. The frontcourt can extend out beyond the three-point arc, forcing other teams to decide between pulling shot blockers out of the lane to guard or switching smaller defenders on centers to keep defensive bigs inside the paint.

The backcourt features scorers, pass-first players and a true post-up option with plenty of playmaking chops. The Rainbow Warriors have the personnel to push the pace and prosper but also have the players to slow down and score in half-court sets late in games.

“There’s an excitement to the new and the unknown,” Ganot said of the fresh roster. “And the experimenting we’ll be doing as we get to know this team better.”

Regardless of inverted sets, fast-paced possessions or cookie-cutter hoops, this roster provides far more diversity in play styles that the teams of recent Hawai’i memory. With plenty of talent to work with, chemistry and details will be the main focus of the next 1.5 months.

“We just want to make sure we don’t skip steps,” Ganot emphasized. “Really, all that matters right now is that we have a good fall six-week program, and I think we have the potential to do that.”