Two golden opportunities refused to yield five more minutes for the Hawaii men’s basketball team.

To cap 40 minutes of competitive play between two Mountain West-bound programs, UH guard Marcus Greene drew double coverage on a driving layup. He was too strong off the glass coming in from the left, but uncovered center Tanner Christensen was there on the weak side. The usually sure-handed big man could not put home the two-handed putback off the glass ahead of the buzzer, however, in 68-66 loss to UC Davis at University Credit Union Center in Davis, Calif., on Thursday night.

"We got incredible looks," UH coach Eran Ganot told Spectrum News in a postgame phone interview. "An uncontested layup at the rim and an uncontested tip-in. That’s what you want.

"I told our guys I know they want that back and they’ll be thinking about that. We need to let it go because we need to think about the other things that hurt us in the game, and there were plenty of them. We gotta show our maturity and professionalism and get those looks again."

The Rainbow Warriors (12-7, 4-4 Big West) dropped their fifth straight to Jim Les’ Aggies in Northern California. UCD (12-8, 6-3) also ended UH’s season in the Big West semifinals last March.

TY Johnson, the conference’s leading scorer, was held in check for much of the game but finished just ahead of his scoring average with 23 points on 9-for-19 shooting to go with four assists, three steals and three turnovers.

"I think we did a good job most of the game, but he ... hit really tough shots, late. And he’s a handful and we know that," Ganot said. "We weren’t able to separate when we were doing a good enough job on him when we needed to."

Pablo Tamba added 19 points on 9-for-12 shooting for the Aggies, while sharpshooter Connor Sevilla hurt UH with eight timely points in the second half.

Johnson hit the go-ahead 18-footer on an isolation play against Kody Williams with 33 seconds left and stole the ball in the final 10 seconds after UH had called timeout to set up a play.

UH took a foul on Johnson and he made the second of two with 7.5 seconds left. UC Davis called timeout to set its defense for UH's final attempt.

Ganot pointed to his team's 13 turnovers to Davis' five — resulting in a 16-4 disadvantage in points off the giveaways — as a key factor, as well as a slow start in execution and the backboards. All three of UH's 3-point makes in the first half were desperation shots at the end of the shot clock.

Starting forward Gytis Nemeiksa scored just four points in 17 minutes, but utility big man Harry Rouhliadeff came off the bench to score a career-high 21 points on 8-for-14 shooting, and grabbed seven rebounds to help his team finish plus-eight in that category.

UH trailed 25-23 after an offensively challenged first half, but Rouhliadeff scored 17 of his team’s first 24 points coming out of intermission as the ‘Bows held a two-point lead with under 11 minutes left.

"Harry has showed these flashes. He’s really picked it up," Ganot said.

Williams shot 2-for-13 from the field but produced 10 points, six rebounds and five assists. Christensen had 11 points and eight rebounds and Ryan Rapp scored 10.

The Rainbows will catch a flight to John Wayne International Airport in Orange County on Friday morning in preparation for Saturday's 5 p.m. Hawaii time game at Big West leader UC Irvine (17-3, 7-1), which lost in overtime at UC Riverside on Thursday.

"A lot of guys, sometimes maybe you want it easy after something like this," Ganot said. "No good player or team wants it easy; they want another challenge and we’re certainly going to get that."

Note: This story was updated with details and quotes.

Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.