By Morris Phillips

The Chaminade Silverswords, the giant killers from Honolulu, were at it again. The Division II powerhouse took advantage of their esteemed position as host school of the Maui Invitational and bagged another one, this time blowing past Cal, 96-72, in the tourney’s seventh-place game.

But unlike upsets over Texas, Oklahoma, Stanford or the big one over Ralph Sampson and No. 1 Virginia in 1982, Chaminade couldn’t claim all the credit this time. That’s because Cal was listless from the start, falling behind 10-0 which drew the ire of first-year coach Wyking Jones.

“For me, in all the years that I’ve been coaching, I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life by the lack of effort from our guys,” Jones said. “So for me, it’s about going back to the drawing board, myself and my staff, and figuring out what changes we need to make because there definitely needs to be some changes.”

Chaminade shot 56 percent from the field for the game and made 14 three-pointers. They grew more accurate after halftime, shooting 67 percent, and briefly increasing their lead to 30. The Silverswords lost to Notre Dame by 27, and Michigan by 38 earlier in the tournament, but registered the first-ever win over a Division I opponent by as many as 24 points against Cal.

“How about those Silverswords, huh?” Coach Eric Roivard gushed. “Incredible performance. We got our butts kicked the last two days. Notre Dame just beat us. And for these guys to just bounce back, get up at 6:00a in the morning, get a little bit of breakfast, watch film of a Cal team that we’ve never seen live before, and to follow the gameplan and to execute what we were trying to do, I give these guys all the credit.”