MANOA — Inoke Lloyd was ready when called upon. The thing is, he called his own number. 

Lloyd slashed to the basket on a backdoor cut, received a perfectly-placed bounce pass from DC Aukusitino and made a layup for the game-winning basket with four seconds left to lift Kahuku to a 40-38 win over Punahou in the title game of the Hawaii Army National Guard/HHSAA Division I Boys Basketball State Championships Friday night. 

A crowd of 2,438 fans at Bankoh Arena at Stan Sheriff Center saw the Red Raiders (25-4) dethrone the defending champion Buffanblu (27-9) for their first state crown since 2017. 

It is the fifth state championship for Kahuku, which won its final 15 games of the season. 

"It feels amazing and I'm just so happy that we won," said Lloyd, a junior guard. He scored six of his seven points after halftime. 

The Red Raiders managed just nine points in the first half and trailed by 13 at the intermission. However, they turned the tide over the final two quarters, when they outscored the Buffanblu, 31-16. 

"We were down big at halftime, but coach just told us to stick with it and we stayed good on defense and we got the lead at the end," Lloyd said. 

Kahuku coach Brandyn Akana said the mood in the team locker room at halftime was anything but dire. 

"It was kind of like, ‘Hey, let's stick with it. We know what we got and let's continue to grind,' " Akana described. "The guys did it. They never thought it was over. We just chipped away slowly and I'm proud of the guys, but that's who they are."

Punahou held a 32-23 lead after three quarters. Lloyd sparked a 13-2 Kahuku run with a drive and finish at the bucket with 5:05 to play. Kashus Daley accounted for seven points in that stretch, including a perfect 5 for 5 on free throws. He capped the run by making three from the line after he was fouled in the act of shooting with 1:30 to play. 

That pushed the Red Raiders ahead, 38-36. 

"I mean, I've been struggling from the free-throw line this tournament, so I got in the gym, I shot free throws and that's all you gotta do; you gotta trust your work," Daley said. 

Daley proved pivotal in Kahuku's second-half comeback. He scored 12 of his team's 14 points in the third quarter, including a pair of 3-pointers, and tallied 21 of his game-high 26 points after halftime. 

"Kash has been solid all year long and I'm glad that he kind of showed up tonight because it was all him, man. You know, he struggled first half but second half, he just went to work. He did exactly what we wanted him to do, drive and get to the paint and draw fouls and hit free throws," Akana said. 

Punahou appeared to pull even a possession later on a baseline drive and bucket by Ethan Chung, but Justus Daley stepped it and drew a charge on the play. After a Kahuku turnover, Punahou did get the game-tying bucket on a Hunter Bond basket — his only points of the game — off an assist from Tanoa Scanlan to even the score at 38 with 21 seconds left. 

The Red Raiders called timeout with 12.8 seconds on the clock to draw up their final possession. 

"We knew that they would be chasing Kash all over the place, so we took him out of the play with the double screen on this (left) side and then Ethan Chung kind of bit on it and we went back door and it was wide open," Akana said. 

Akana disclosed that it was Lloyd who drew up the play — one that they had never run before. 

"He kind of said, ‘Eh, let's do this,' and I was like, ‘Man, I don't like to run a play if we don't (have it down).' Inoke was the one who kind of told us and I said, ‘Let's do it then. Why not?,' but it was perfect. It was perfect, man, and (Chung) bit and that back door was wide open," Akana said. 

Lloyd was just 2-of-9 shooting on field goals prior to the layup. 

"That was the only play that mattered and we executed perfectly and it gave me a wide open layup," Lloyd said. 

It was also the only assist recorded by Aukusitino, who contributed 22 minutes off the bench. 

"DC's a baller and I mean, at the end of the game he's always in at the end of the game because he handles it, he can score and he's real smart," Akana said. 

Punahou took its final timeout with four seconds left. Bond inbounded the ball to Scanlan, who took two dribbles then found Koen Makinano on the left wing with about 1.5 seconds remaining. Makinano stepped into the shot a few feet beyond the 3-point line, but his shot was contested by both Kashus Daley and Aukusitino and it bounced off the front rim as time expired. 

"Yeah, I mean, we can't ask for a better shot at it," Buffanblu coach Darren Matsuda said. "That was a good shot, it just didn't go in for us. We had some pretty good shots that didn't go in for us at the end of the game."

Matsuda credited the Red Raiders for drawing up and executing the backdoor play for the go-ahead bucket. 

"That was a great play he drew up and we run the same play and Iolani runs the same play, so I mean, they got us on it. We usually get guys on it and we got get on it today," Matsuda said. 

Punahou shot just 4 of 20 (20 percent) from the field in the second half. It was 0 for 6 on 3-pointers after halftime and just 1 for 14 from distance for the game. 

Kahuku scored 12 of its 14 points in the paint over the final two quarters. It was only 4 for 6 on free throws in the first half, but made 13 of 15 from the stripe after halftime. 

"Halftime, we just said, ‘We're going to spread it out and we're going to attack and we're going to move the ball like we've done all year,' but our main focus was defense. Our focus is defense. Every practice coach preaches defense and we feed off our defense, so that's what we do," Kashus Daley said. 

Akana said the second half served as a testament to his team's resilience.

"I mean, nine points in a half — that was crazy — but these guys battled, I knew we would turn the tide at some point, we just didn't know when. We were running out of time and sure enough (in) the last minutes, that's when we came on strong and showed our grit," Akana said. 

Conversely, Matsuda lamented the missed opportunities by his squad, which grabbed 12 offensive rebounds, but only turned it into 12 second-chance points. The Buffanblu out-rebounded the Red Raiders, 33 to 25. 

"I think we got into some fatigue issues and we stopped playing. We had chances to separate on them, we just didn't make plays. We didn't make baskets when we needed to down the stretch, so hats off to them, I mean, I thought they grinded it out," Matsuda said. 

He added, "They kept coming, coming, coming and they played a little bit more together than us at the end in the very last quarter, so I think that was a little difference in the game."

The first half, by comparison, was all Punahou. 

The Buffanblu scored the first eight points of the game and held a 10-2 lead after the opening quarter. They closed out the second quarter on a 7-3 run to take a 22-9 advantage into halftime. 

Kahuku shot just 2 of 19 from the field before the break. 

"They kind of did a good job on not allowing us to penetrate, which we kept saying, ‘We gotta stop shooting 3s and just keep penetrating,' so after a while they kind of softened it up, but at first they were playing good defense on us. They were confident, they were physical, they were beating us up, but then the tides kind of turned when we started hitting shots," Akana said. 

Scanlan scored 14 points and Chung 11 to lead Punahou. Scanlan also recorded seven rebounds, four assists, one steal and a block and Chung notched nine boards, three blocks, two assists and one steal in the loss. 

The Buffanblu were held to their lowest scoring output of the season. 

"That's been our whole season," said Akana, whose team held its three opponents this week to an average of 42 points per game. 

"We take pride on that and the guys manning up half court — our shell defense we call it — and at the end of the game we were lock down. Perfect," Akana added. 

The Red Raiders path to the state title went through three teams from the Interscholastic League of Honolulu. After a first-round bye, they opened with a 57-50 win over No. 5 Iolani in Wednesday's quarterfinal round and followed that up with a 42-38 win over second-ranked Saint Louis in the semifinals on Thursday. 

"We talked about it at the beginning of the season, that if we want that koa head, we gotta go through all three ILH teams and they set us up to that way and we just took it one game at a time and I'm just happy how everything ended up," Akana expressed. 

What made Kahuku's run to its first state championship in nine years even more unlikely was the fact that its leading scorer, 6-foot-6 junior guard Ronin Naihe (17.2 ppg), missed the final five games of the season with a fractured wrist. 

"Ronin's a big part of us. He helped us with this but that's who we are. Everyone stepped up, everyone does their role and that's just the team we are; we step up in the big moments. We all have heart, we didn't want to lose, so we just gave it everything we had," said Kashus Daley, who was named Most Outstanding Player of the state tournament. 

Since Naihe suffered the season-ending injury, the Red Raiders have had four different players lead in scoring over their final five contests. 

"We didn't have to say much to these guys. We knew what they were going to do, but the question was who's going to step up and man, if you start (looking at) it from OIAs it was different people, right? Inoke, Tiki (Akina-Watson), then you get (Justus) and then you got Kash, everybody just kind of took their turns and I mean, that just tells you what type of team these guys are," Akana said. 

Akana noted that unlike Kahuku's last state championship-winning team in 2017 — which included All-Hawaii First Team selections Samuta Avea and Daniel Fotu, as well as Player of the Year Jessiya Villa — this year's squad was often overlooked. 

"Oh, totally. I mean, look at our team, right? We ain't big but everybody can handle, we can drive, we can shoot and in '17 we were highly favored — we had skill, we had size, we had everything — but these guys showed that it's still a guard's game. Basketball is still run by the guards and you can be big, but with all the guards, it's tough; it's difficult," Akana said. 

It was the Red Raiders' first appearance in the title game since 2018, when it lost to Punahou by a score of 64-37. 

The Buffanblu reached the final for a third straight year. They were seeking their 13th state championship and fourth under Matsuda.

Punahou had won 14 of its last 15 games and saw its 11-game win streak come to an end.