With their season on the line and their team leading the entire game, the Kealakehe Waveriders were less than three minutes away from clinching a spot in the BIIF Division I boys basketball semifinals.
The Konawaena Wildcats put a stop to that.
With 2:22 left in the fourth quarter, Wildcat junior Kaimana Awa-Moss drew the Konawaena home crowd to their feet as he drained a 3-point shot to put the Wildcats up 27-26 for their first lead of Saturday’s game.
Kealakehe never recovered, and the Wildcats defeated the Waveriders 30-27 at Ellison Onizuka Gymnasium in a tie-breaker game to clinch the fourth seed.
“It feels good,” Konawaena head coach Donald Awa said. “I didn’t think we played well. Offensively, we didn’t have a very good game at all. Defense had to keep us in the game. But it was nice to get a win at the end.”
Kainoa Jones led the scoring for Konawaena with nine points.
Kealakehe senior Albert Freddy and junior Howard Robert both scored nine for the Waveriders.
Awa praised his team’s defense, which he said has improved since the two teams met on Jan. 20. Kealakehe won that game 39-33. Awa said the Wildcat offense still needs some work before they see the court in the BIIF playoffs.
“We did game plan a little better defensively this time,” Awa said. “Whatever we did offensively to game plan didn’t work; we still struggled. I think we scored less than the last time and that game was in the 30s. We did a lot better job on the defense — we gave up a lot of backdoors, cuts and baseline drives — and we definitely took that away this game.”
The Waveriders were up 26-22 with four minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. The Wildcats started their comeback with a layup from Jones to make it a 26-24 Waverider lead before Awa-Moss scored from the beyond the arc.
Senior guard Aldrin Gadot came through for the Wildcats to make three out of four free throws in the final minutes of the fourth quarter to solidify the win for Konawaena.
“It came down to free throws,” Awa said. “And I think both teams shot poorly from the line.”
The Waveriders will miss out on the BIIF playoffs again this year, as Kealakehe has not reached the BIIF tournament since 2015.
The Wildcats will play No. 1-seeded Waiakea on Tuesday at the Kealakehe High School gym.
Konawaena lost to Waiakea 61-46 on Dec. 23, but Awa said his team is ready for the rematch, especially with the game being on the west side of the island, making it more of a home setting for the Wildcats.
“We’ll look to the game where we played them for the first time to prepare,” Awa said. “We kind of know what they run and we wanted to see them again anyway because before we played them in their own gym. I’m not worried. Hilo just beat them, and I really think the top four, five teams in the BIIF are pretty even.”
