For 362 days of the year, the Chaminade Silverswords are a typical Division II college basketball team, too busy battling for gym space to give much thought to the basketball world outside their tiny corner of Honolulu.

For three days every November, though, the 1,200-student Catholic school takes a seat at the apex of the college basketball world.

Chaminade has hosted the Maui Invitational since the tournament’s inception in 1984. The competition, which regularly attracts the some of the nation’s top Division I programs, has become synonymous with Chaminade’s basketball program and the university itself.

‘This tournament is one of the first things people hear about the university in general,’ Chaminade head coach Matt Mahar said. ‘The Maui Invitational is Chaminade, and Chaminade is the Maui Invitational.’

Mahar’s statement has taken on a literal meaning for the university’s athletic department. The Maui Invitational provides Chaminade with the type of name recognition that few schools of similar size or location could dream of. The publicity Chaminade garners from Maui drives the entire department and produces benefits that go beyond the tournament’s direct financial benefits.

‘The tournament puts our name out there nationally,’ Chaminade Athletic Director Kaia Hedlund said. ‘You can’t say it affects the women’s cross country team, but in a sense it does. It draws people to become affiliated with the university who otherwise would not.’

Mahar counts himself as one of those people. Mahar, who is in his second season as Chaminade head coach after joining the program in 2001 as an assistant, admits he first heard of the school from watching the team play in the Maui Invitational several years ago.

Senior point guard Zach Whiting has a similar story. He first heard of Chaminade in 2002 while a freshman at Feather River College in California. That November, he happened to catch Chaminade playing Massachusetts on television.

‘All of a sudden two months later I got a few letters (from Chaminade),’ said Whiting, a preseason nominee for the Bob Cousy Award for the best college point guard, regardless of level. ‘Before anybody even talked to me I wanted to go. For me to be guaranteed three years in Maui was a huge draw.’

Less than a year later, Whiting played his first game at Chaminade in the 2003 Maui Invitational against Big East stalwart Villanova. He defended current NBA guard and 2006 Big East Player of the Year Randy Foye in Chaminade’s upset of the Wildcats. That win marked the last time the Silverswords won a game in the Invitational. It was just the team’s fourth victory in the tournament since its creation.

‘It’s everybody’s dream to come in and get that big upset,’ Mahar said. ‘Maui is a huge recruiting tool for us.’

No Chaminade victory is more noteworthy than the Silverswords’ defeat of top-ranked Virginia and the Cavaliers’ All-American center Ralph Sampson in 1982. That win sparked a media frenzy and inspired the idea for an annual tournament in Hawaii to be hosted by Chaminade. Two years later, the Maui Invitational became a reality.

‘It’s definitely an honor for us,’ Mahar said. ‘I think over the years it has built up to be the best in-season tournament in the country.’

Despite the allure of a potential upset, though, playing at Chaminade is not without its drawbacks. A lack of athletic scholarships and the remote access to the Hawaiian Islands make Chaminade a tough sell for many recruits. In fact, the Maui Invitational hosts do not even have their own basketball arena on campus. Instead, the Silverswords, who finished atop the Pacific West Conference last season with an overall record of 19-9, practice and play their games in a nearby high school gym. Players are able to use the facility only during allotted practice time slots.

It’s no wonder then that the team and the entire campus relish their early season departure from obscurity. The basketball team’s involvement in the Maui Invitational galvanizes the Chaminade student body, if only for a week. The university arranges charter flights for students or faculty who wish to make the pilgrimage to Maui in hopes of watching Chaminade play the role of Cinderella once more.

For 23 years, the allure of visiting paradise and playing elite competition has made the Maui Invitational a consistent draw for the nation’s elite teams. North Carolina, Duke, UCLA and Kentucky, among many others, have all made multiple visits to Maui. As the seasons and teams come and go, though, tiny Chaminade remains the tournament’s constant, as much a tradition as the competition itself.

As for this year’s invitational, Chaminade finished winless for the third straight season, losing to DePaul, Oklahoma and eventual tournament champion UCLA. As is the case every year, a winless campaign in Maui does not mean all is lost for Chaminade. The experience and name recognition Chaminade gains from the Invitational goes far beyond what a scoreboard can tell.

‘It’s just great for our kids to have this opportunity,’ Hedlund said. ‘Just seeing the team play so well is a tremendous source of pride for the entire university.’

ACC Dominance

The ACC/Big Ten Challenge is supposed to be a competitive showcase between two of the nation’s top conferences. For the eighth straight season, though, the series proved not much of a challenge for the crew from the Atlantic Coast.

The ACC won this year’s series, 8-3, punctuated by No. 7 North Carolina’s 98-89 upset of third-ranked Ohio State Wednesday night. The Big Ten has still never defeated the ACC in the challenge since the competition’s inception in 1999.

This Week’s BMOC

This week’s award goes to Butler guard A.J Graves. Graves led the Bulldogs on a Cinderella run to the preseason National Invitational Tournament title earlier this week, dropping 26 points in the tournament finale against Gonzaga. The junior guard averaged 22.3 ppg during an improbable tournament run in which Butler defeated Notre Dame, Indiana, Tennessee and Gonzaga.

One day after securing the NIT, Graves played 48 minutes and netted 26 more points in a double overtime victory over Kent State. Behind Graves, Butler has climbed into the top 25, coming into this week ranked 19th in the nation.

Published on November 30, 2006 at 12:00 pm