St. Joseph junior Cole DeSilva had one of those games basketball players always dream about, where the shots keep falling and everything hits nothing but net.
The 5-foot-10 guard scored 32 points in the best performance of his young career, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Honokaa, which prevailed 73-67 in the Cardinal Classic on Friday.
DeSilva delighted the Cardinal faithful with a fine display of marksmanship at the preseason tournament at Afook-Civic Auditorium, where he buried seven 3-pointers, including four in the first quarter.
“Cole got going. It was his best shooting game so far,” St. Joe coach Mike Scanlan said. “We were waiting for him to have one of those. He’ll shoot good in practice and in men’s league, but it’s the first time we saw him have that confidence in a game. Hopefully, it snowballs.
“In the first half, he got a lot of 3s in transition. In the second half, he got them in what we call a bump screen, a fade to the top of the key.”
DeSilva was nearly automatic at the stripe with 5 of 6 free throws, and Manato Fukuda was equally effective with 10 of 11 free throws to finish with 19 points for St. Joe.
Shyrome Batin scored 21 points for Honokaa, nailing four treys.
Jonathan Charbonneau added 17 points and Wesley Salboro had 13 points, including two 3-pointers.
“We’re kind of young and I’m hoping our seniors (Batin and Salboro) provide a lot of leadership,” Honokaa coach Jayme Carvalho said. “When we executed, we did what we wanted and got good looks and opportunities. When we didn’t, they hit 3-pointers on us. We were running a zone and DeSilva was killing us, so we had to go with a man (defense).”
It sort of worked.
DeSilva scored one point in the second quarter, but bombed away with two long balls in a 14-point third period scoring spree, and another 3-ball in the final eight minutes.
In the fourth quarter, DeSilva buried his final 3-pointer to leapfrog St. Joseph to a 61-59 lead with 4:15 remaining. Then Honokaa retook the lead, and DeSilva tied it twice.
He converted two free throws to tie it at 63-all with 2:53 to play. Then DeSilva cut to the basket off a screen, caught a sharp pass from Zack Jordan, and dropped in a layup.
It was a well-executed play, but on Honokaa’s possession Dominick Galacgac was all alone under the basket, after a defensive breakdown, and scored an easy layup for a 67-65 lead with under a minute left.
From there, the Dragons converted 5 of 6 free throws to send the Cardinals into the seventh-place game at 5 p.m. Saturday against Ka‘u.
Carvalho had a good chuckle about Honokaa’s closing hot streak at the free-throw line.
“Prior to that, we went 0 for 6 or 0 for 7,” he said. “But our guys stepped up and our conditioning kicked in and we made some easy baskets.”