HONOLULU — Chaminade University Athletics announced Wednesday that Saturday’s men’s and women’s basketball regular season finales against Azusa Pacific will be broadcast on ScoringLive.com.
Tipoff of the women’s game will be at 5:30 p.m. HST while the men are scheduled to tip at 7:30 p.m. Both games will be free to view.
It will also be Senior Night for six Chaminade seniors. Jakarra Waddell (Burbank, Calif./Long Beach City College) is the lone senior on the women’s squad while Justin Bridges (Atlanta/Georgia Highlands College), Nate Pollard (Bountiful, Utah/Rice University), Austin Pope (Burbank, Calif./North Idaho College), Matt Southard (Norman, Okla./Yavapai College) and Dantley Walker (Panaca, Nev./UNLV) will be honored after the men’s game.
Saturday’s contest on the men’s side could very well determine who will be the Pacific West Conference’s sixth and final team into the conference tournament in Riverside, Calif. next week.
Chaminade and Academy of Art are knotted for the sixth spot at 10-8 in the PacWest while Hawaii Pacific, last year’s PacWest champs, is a game back at 9-9 with two games remaining.
The Silverswords, however, control their own destiny — win their last two games, and they punch their ticket to Riverside. Chaminade currently holds a tiebreaker over Academy of Art due to its win over the Urban Knights in January. In a scenario involving a three-way tie between CUH, ART U and HPU, the ’Swords also hold the tiebreaker due to their better winning percentage among games played against each other. But the Sharks hold the tiebreaker in a Chaminade-HPU tie due to strength of schedule.
The Silverswords will be at Hawaii-Hilo (5-13 PacWest) Thursday. However, the Big Island has not been kind to the ’Swords as of late, having lost three straight to the Vulcans there.
On the women’s side, the Silverswords (2-18, 2-16 PacWest) have already been eliminated from tournament consideration. However, if Azusa (16-2 PacWest) were to beat HPU (17-1) on Thursday, the two teams would be tied atop the conference standings. Chaminade can then play a role as a spoiler and try to help their crosstown rivals win the PacWest regular season title and the No. 1 seed in the tournament. APU defeated the Silverswords in the first meeting a week ago.
