Chaminade coach Matt Mahar recognizes the impact that the Maui Invitational has on his Division II basketball program.
Players who agree to become a Silversword not only get the chance to spend four years in sun-splashed Honolulu, they also get four chances to make a national splash at the annual preseason tournament on their neighboring island.
“They want the chance to go against the big dogs every year,” Mahar said.
According to lore, a lot of the motivation for starting the tournament came after Chaminade, then an NAIA school, knocked off then-No. 1 Virginia led by mighty Ralph Sampson in 1982 when the Cavaliers made a stop on the island.
Since the Silverswords recorded one of college basketball’s greatest upsets, Chaminade has had considerably less success in the November tournament.
Notably, the Silverswords beat a short-handed Villanova squad in 2003 that eventually made the NIT. In 2007, they knocked off Princeton. And last year, they went down to the wire with a pretty bad Indiana team before coming up short.
In the first round of last year’s tournament, they lost to eventual tournament- and national- champion North Carolina by 45. The Silverswords finished the year 15-12 overall.
That brings us to tonight’s first round match-up with the No. 25 Terps- a game in which Mahar called his squad “a major, major underdog.”
Mahar, who’s in his fifth season, brings his youngest squad to Lahaina Civic Center, and he’s just hoping they can adjust to the ESPN cameras and intense major college atmosphere fairly quickly.
The Silverswords knocked off a team of local Hawaii all-stars in their exhibition tune-up for this event, according to Mahar. But the Chaminade coach said to be competitive his squad is going to need to top that performance in the much tougher conditions.
“We need to get better really quick,” Mahar said.
Eric Detweiler is The Diamondback’s Terrapin Men’s Basketball Team beat writer. He can be reached at edetweilerdbk@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edetweiler.