Mon, Feb 17, 2025 @ Mililani

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Kahuku

63

Mililani

51

Final	1	2	3	4
Kahuku (11-2, 21-10)	13	17	13	20	63
Mililani (11-3, 21-7)	11	19	7	14	51

Roman Gabriel 19 pts  3 3pm  0/3 FTs

Kashus Daley 17 pts  9/12 FTs

Dhenz Agcaoili | SL

View image 1 of 1

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Dhenz Agcaoili | SL

View image 1 of 1

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MILILANI — The Red Raiders got their revenge Monday night. 

Four players scored in double figures to carry No. 9 Kahuku to a 63-51 upset of No. 6 Mililani in the first round of the HHSAA Division I Boys Basketball State Championships. 

Kashus Daley scored 17 points, Mystique Akina-Watson had 14, Rivers Evans 12 and Ronin Naihe 10 for the Red Raiders (12-2), who will face fourth-seeded Baldwin in a 5 p.m. quarterfinal Wednesday at McKinley's Student Council Gymnasium. 

Roman Gabriel scored a game-high 19 points and LeCedric Brown added 17 for the Trojans (11-4), who saw their season come to an end on their home court for a third straight year.

It was the second meeting between the teams in less than two weeks. Just 12 days prior, Mililani came away with a 57-47 win at Kahuku in the quarterfinal round of the OIA tournament. 

"We thought we kind of let that one go at our place, so it was our turn and we thought, ‘Hey, let's go to their place and return the favor,' so that was our big thing all week — they were looking forward to it and I'm glad they came out and played," Red Raiders coach Brandyn Akana said. 

The 10-point loss relegated Akana's squad to the backside of the bracket; It went on to finish fifth, while the Trojans made a run to their fourth consecutive league final. 

That was all but a distant memory for the Red Raiders after the final whistle Monday. 

"It feels good. It feels real good," Akina-Watson said. "The feeling we got when they sent us home from making it to OIAs was a horrible feeling and we didn't want to feel like that coming into states, so we had to work hard."

Much of the turnaround came at the free throw line. In the first meeting, Kahuku shot just 2 of 5 from the charity stripe. This time around, it went 19 of 22 from the line. 

"We talked a lot about our free throws because we didn't hit our free throws our game before and we struggled to hit our shots from the outside, but we worked really hard, we did a lot of drills and we hit 3s tonight and we made our free throws and that's what won us the game," Akina-Watson said.

The Red Raiders forced the Trojans to commit 19 fouls, while they were whistled for 16 infractions. 

Two Mililani players — point guard Ezekiel Virtudes and shooting guard Tui Tukimaka — fouled out in the closing minutes. 

"We didn't get to the line at our place and those guys came in and they were physical with us, but tonight I felt that we were the physical ones, so we got a lot of free throws and we just kind of spread ‘em and just drove on them," Akana said. 

The score was tied at 32 early in the second half before Tukimaka hit a straightaway 3-pointer to put Mililani up. It would be short-lived, however. 

Akina-Watson found Naihe on a backdoor cut and the latter put away the easy bucket to ignite a momentum-turning 11-0 Kahuku run. Daley made a free throw about a minute later to tie it at 35 before Akina-Watson hit a fadeaway jumper from about 12 feet to put his team ahead for good with 3:10 remaining in the third quarter. 

The Red Raiders then switched from a man-to-man defense to a 2-3 zone look that forced the Trojans into a scoreless stretch of nearly seven minutes. Meanwhile, they extended their lead to 43-35 following a steal and fast break layup by Akina-Watson. 

"We worked on it a lot," Akina-Watson said of the zone. "The first time we ran it against them we struggled a lot — they were hitting shots, they were getting rebounds — but that's all we were working on in practice and we got better at it so we tried it and it worked."

Akana echoed the thoughts of his junior point guard. 

"We went into that zone and that kind of hurt them. We've been working on changing it up and when you play a good team like Mililani — who can score a lot, they like to go up and down — I think we changed it up on them, that kind of slowed them down and then we were able to get the momentum again," Akana said. 

In the first half, Mililani took a brief 16-15 lead on a 3-pointer by Gabriel from the left corner with 6:23 left in the second quarter. However, Kahuku pulled back ahead on its ensuing possession with a three-point play by Daley, who converted a difficult up-and-under shot in the lane despite being fouled. He made the ensuing free throw to give his team an 18-16 lead. 

Kahuku extended its lead to 28-22 with a Justus Daley 3-pointer from the left corner with 2:40 left in the half. The teams traded buckets — Tukimaka hit a driving layup for the Trojans and Noah Feinga assisted on a Kashus Daley basket for the Red Raiders — to keep it at a six-point cushion for the visitors. 

However, Brown made a pair of free throws to ignite 6-0 run for Mililani to close out the first half. Tukimaka came up with a steal and broke away for a layup just before the halftime buzzer to send it into the intermission tied at 30. 

Kahuku led by as many as 14 down the stretch. It outscored Mililani, 33-21, over the final two quarters. 

The Red Raiders' leading scorer on the year, Naihe, was held to a season-low 10 points but was a perfect 4 for 4 from the free throw line. 

"Tonight was more of a balanced scoring night with everybody, not just a single person and that's what we try to do is feed the person who's scoring to help us win the game," said Akina-Watson, who made all six of his attempts from the charity stripe.

Daley shot 9 of 12 from the line and scored 11 points after halftime, while Evans tallied eight of his points in the final quarter. 

It was the fourth time in as many years that Kahuku won a state first-round game on the road.

"I think our guys know, right, the last three years we've been in this game, but I think the maturity of the team — a lot of guys been here and although they're young, they've been here two, three years playing in this (game) — so they understood what it was and we said, ‘Our backs are against the wall and we gotta come out and compete,' which they did tonight," Akana said. "Awesome."

Conversely for the Trojans, despite hosting a state first-round game for the third consecutive season, they ended the year in a familiar fashion. 

Mililani lost to to Moanalua in the play-in round of the 2023 state tournament and fell victim to Kalaheo in the same round last year.