Sizzling shooting display helps Hawaii Pacific to blowout win over St. Edwards

HONOLULU – Welcome to the Splash Zone.

Behind a blistering first half of long-range shooting and suffocating defensive showing, the Hawaii Pacific University men’s basketball team cruised to an 88-64 victory over St. Edwards (TX) on Friday morning to begin the 2026 Hoops in Hawaii Tip-Off Classic tournament.

The Sharks (1-0) looked right at home despite playing at McCabe Gym on the Chaminade campus, connecting on 19 3-pointers as a team in the season-opening win. It marked the most made threes in a single game for HPU since hitting a program record 20 triples against Grace Bible College in the Hoops in Hawaii Classic in 2015.

“Winning is hard so [when] you get a win like that, you try to enjoy it,” fourth-year head coach Jesse Nakanishi said after the game. “Every team in this tournament is figuring out their own team right now, so being able to get a win like that while we’re still figuring ourselves out is a sign of some good work that we put in.”

Senior guard Avi Halpert paced HPU with a game-high 23 points, shooting 8-of-11 from the floor and 7-of-10 from behind the arc against a Hilltoppers squad that received votes in the NCAA Division II men’s basketball Top 25 preseason poll. All but two of Halpert’s points came before the halftime buzzer, helping the Sharks take a 57-25 lead into the locker rooms after 20 minutes of play.

“[Shooting is] a separator in basketball and we shot the heck out of it in the first half and fortunately created a big enough gap to hang on in a second half where we did not take care of the ball very well,” said Nakanishi.

HPU shot it at 63% clip from the floor and knocked down 15-of-24 attempts from beyond the arc across the action in the first half. Despite a team featuring nine new players and returning zero starters from a season ago, they dished out 17 assists on the 19 total shots made from the field.

“We really talk about turning bronze to silver and silver to gold as far as how we rate shots,” a pleased Nakanishi explained of the offense. “Our guys shared it, especially in that first half … Obviously, you’ve got to make shots to get assists, but we really were moving the ball and sharing the ball and pushing in transition with pitch-aheads that really gave us some clean looks in the first half.”

The Sharks turned the ball over 24 times in total, 18 coming after halftime, leading to 25 points for St. Edwards. Despite the giveaway woes, HPU held the Hilltoppers to 12-for-31 shooting in the second half to hold on for a 24-point win and advance into the tournament semifinals on Saturday, October 31.

Robert Conran’s 16 points paced St. Edwards in the loss. Donovan Santoro was the only other Hilltopper to trickle into double figures, chipping in 11 points in 14 minutes off the bench.

Third-year forward Marino Dubravcic chipped in his first career double-double in the victory, tallying 10 points and 12 rebounds in 22 minutes of work in his first official game in an HPU uniform. The 6-foot-10 transfer from Northern Iowa also committed a team-high seven turnovers.

USC-Beaufort transfer Evan Kilminster also enjoyed his Sharks debut, adding 15 points and six assists in 31 minutes of action. The 6-foot-3 guard drained four 3-pointers, second-most on the squad behind Halpert.

Returning third-year guard Nemanja Sarenac was the fourth and final Shark to register double digits in the points category, cashing in a trio of triples while completing a four-point play to finish with 10 points in 28 minutes. The Serbian guard also grabbed four rebounds, handed out three assists and registered two of the team’s nine total steals.

Hawaii Pacific will take on Minot State (ND) in the tournament semifinals on Saturday at 5:15 p.m. HT inside McCabe Gym. The Beavers upset Adelphi (NY) in the second game of the tournament as guard Jayse Boatwright’s 34 points helped lift the team over the Panthers, 75-74.