SIMPLY FABULOUS

The University of Hawai‘i basketball program’s “Fabulous Five” era lasted just two seasons – 1970-71 and 1971-72 – but, oh, what an era it was.

Al Davis. Jerome Freeman. Dwight Holiday. Bob Nash. John Penebacker. These five young men came to the Islands and, along with their teammates and their head coach, Red Rocha, put Rainbow Warrior basketball on the college basketball map. Their accomplishments included a number of notable firsts: the program’s first postseason appearance, its first win over a ranked opponent, its first Rainbow Classic championship and its first national ranking.

This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of perhaps the Fabulous Five’s crowning achievement: Hawai‘i’s first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.

Ephraim “Red” Rocha had a feeling the 1970-71 season was going to bring more wins. It had to. The school’s eighth-year head coach was coming off a miserable 6-20 campaign the previous year.

Penebacker was a freshman on that 1969-70 squad. “It was very troublesome,” he recalls. “I almost transferred.”

But help was on the way in the form of four talented junior college transfers. Holiday was a 6’4” sharpshooter out of Hartnell Junior College in California. Freeman was a 5’9” ball-handling wizard who played at Mineral Area Junior College in Missouri. The 6’7” Davis, Freeman’s high school classmate, had been a star forward at College of Southern Idaho.

Then there was 6’8” Nash, an Athens, Georgia native who played two seasons at San Jacinto College in Texas.

“The University of Kansas was pursuing me pretty heavily, and I actually signed my portion of the Letter of Intent to go [be a Jayhawk],” Nash recalls. “Then I had a home visit from their coach, Ted Owens, and he gave me his spiel and his expectations for the upcoming season. After talking extensively with him, something just didn’t seem right. So I asked my Mom not to sign her portion of the Letter of Intent. Jo Jo White of the Boston Celtics went to my Mom’s house to get her to sign, but she didn’t sign it. I was trying to figure out what to do when Red Rocha called and asked me if I would be interested in Hawai‘i. He brought in a film reel, and we watched a video on Hawai‘i. He told me about the struggles that the program had had. He was very honest in his approach, and there was just something about his personality that clicked with me. I decided that I would put my fate in his hand and that Hawai‘i was the best fit for me.”

How did Rocha know about his future All-American? Nash smiles.

“Hawai‘i used to send out all these postcards,” he explains. “The postcards said, ‘If you have any interest in Hawai‘i, fill this out and send it back.’ They sent it one of my teammates in junior college, and he said, ‘Well, I’m going to Bowling Green.’ So I filled out the postcard instead and sent it back. That’s how I got on their radar.”

Ironically, Penebacker’s first collegiate game was against Hawai‘i. The 6’2” jumping jack joined the Air Force out of Princeton High School in Cincinnati. Stationed in the Islands, he scored 18 points for the Hickam Flyers against the Rainbow Warriors in the 1967 season opener.

Penebacker joined UH at the urging of Armed Forces League Commissioner and announcer Chuck Leahey, the father of Hawai‘i broadcasting legend Jim Leahey and grandfather of the current UH TV play-by-play voice, Kanoa Leahey.

“I was asked if I had any eligibility left,” Penebacker recalls, “and I replied that I never actually used any of my eligibility.”

The Fabulous Five era got off to a blazing start, winning its first seven games. 

“After our fifth game we were five and oh,” says Holiday. “We felt the connection, you know, ‘Hawaii Five-0.’ We knew then that we were good enough to win. And once we started winning, we didn’t want to lose.”

Adds Davis, “I always figured that we were going to win. I never played on a losing team. Jerome had never played on a losing team. Bob had never played on a losing team. Winning was all we knew. I think that was just our mindset.”

The win streak included an 83-76 victory over Michigan in the seventh-annual Rainbow Classic holiday tournament. Freeman led Hawai‘i with game-highs of 22 points and – remember, he’s 5’9” – 11 rebounds.

The very next night, with Davis scoring 29 points, the Rainbows beat BYU in a 94-90 thriller to capture the host school’s first Rainbow Classic title. The program’s previous highest finish was fourth.

The Rainbow Warriors wrapped up the regular season with a 22-3 record, earning the program’s first-ever postseason appearance: The National Invitational Tournament in New York. In their opening-round matchup, Hawai‘i outlasted Oklahoma in double overtime, 88-87. Penebacker paced the ’Bows with 20 points, while Nash and Davis combined for 29 rebounds. Hawai‘i would fall to St. Bonaventure, 73-64, two nights later to be eliminated from the tournament.

Although their season had come to an end, the team felt a sense of accomplishment.

“We went from being nobodies,” said Penebacker, “to town heroes.”

The best was yet to come.

The Rainbow Warriors opened the 1971-72 season with nine straight victories, including the school’s first win over a nationally ranked opponent. On Dec. 18, Hawai‘i led No. 9 Florida State, 30-10, when Seminoles head coach Hugh Durham got into a heated argument with a game official and stormed off the court with his team. UH was awarded the game via forfeit.

“What really happened was we were playing one of the best games we ever played, and [Hugh Durham] couldn’t take it,” UH Athletics Director Paul Durham told a newspaper reporter after the game. “He walked off the floor because he couldn’t take the beating.”

Says Davis of that night: “Everybody was shocked that we were able to beat them the way we did. We beat them pretty soundly. They came back for the rematch the next night…”

He smiles. “And we beat them again.”

A little more than a week later, Hawai‘i had two reasons to celebrate: First, the team earned its first-ever national ranking, coming in at No. 18 by in the Associated Press poll. Second, the Rainbow Warriors once again found themselves in the Rainbow Classic championship game. This time, the opponent was Arizona State.

“Arizona State was a very good opponent, recalls Nash. “They got off to a good lead on us. Their big player was Paul Stovall, and he was a monster to deal with. He was about 6’8”, 240. He was having his way with us in the first half. Al Davis was guarding him and I was guarding Rhea Taylor. At halftime, Al said, ‘Let’s switch up. I’ll guard Taylor. You guard Stovall.’”

Trailing by eight at intermission, the ’Bows roared back in the second half. Nash seemed to grab every available rebound, igniting the UH fast break and scoring on put backs. When the final buzzer sounded, the sellout crowd of 7,495 fans at the Honolulu International Center (now Neal Blaisdell Arena) gave their team a standing ovation. Hawai‘i 87, Arizona State 77.

Nash led his team with 27 points and a still-standing school record 30 rebounds. Honolulu Advertiser columnist Hal Wood called it “a performance that sports fans see only once in a lifetime.”

Fact: The Fabulous Five sold out all 19 home games in the 1971-72 season. No doubt, the Rainbow Warriors were the talk of the town. 

“Every place we went, we were treated like rock stars, says Davis today. We were having breakfast with Mayor Frank Fasi and lunch with Gov. John Burns. Richard Boone and Jack Lord came to our games. It was like we were the Lakers of Hawai‘i.”

“The fans were great. I guess they liked me a little more because I was the shortest,” recalls Freeman, chuckling. “I really enjoyed that. We’d sign autographs before and after the games. Really, I can’t think of a better place to enjoy fans than in Hawai‘i.”

Adds Penebacker, “Fans love winners. We were winning and we were playing an entertaining brand of ball. Also, you can’t overlook those aloha print uniforms. People really took to them!”

The love affair went both ways.

Says Nash, “We had [teammate] Dennis Sallas, who was a Hawai‘i-born kid, and he showed us another side of Hawai‘i - apart from the college scene. We got to know his family and get into the community. We got to learn about the Hawaiian culture. We started going out to speak at all the schools. All those kinds of things brought us closer to the community.

“The people of Hawai‘i took us in, they hanai’ed us,” says Holiday. We played for them. They came to watch us. They loved us, and we loved them. It was really a special time. Everything just came together.”

Although the five starters drew most of the attention, they were quick to acknowledge their teammates.

“The five of us couldn’t do it alone,” says Davis. “They played hard against us in practice every day. They were as important as anything else to our success.”

Adds Nash, “We had some good players on our bench. Tom Newell was actually a starter for part of our first season, for Dwight Holiday. We also had Todd Huber, Mark Skillicorn, Dennis Sallas, Artie Wilson, Tyrone Bradshaw – guys like that. They all made a big difference. They pushed us every day in practice. They were great teammates and afforded us the ability to shine.”

Leading the entire team, of course, was Rocha, the gangly Hilo-born coach who was a two-time NBA All-Star and member of the 1955 league champion Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers). Rocha coached the Detroit Pistons for three seasons before returning to the Islands to helm the UH program.

“Red was a good coach,” says Freeman, who was the team’s captain for both Fabulous Five seasons. “He gave us the freedom to use our talents, and we could freelance a little bit because he had faith in us to make plays. If something broke down on offense, we didn’t have to stop and start over again. We kept going until we got the shot we wanted.”

Averaging 91.7 points per game – each Fabulous Five starter had scoring averages of at least 14 points – Hawai‘i finished the regular season with a 24-2 record and No. 12 national ranking.

The team actually had a choice of which postseason tournament to attend. 

“We had a long discussion as a team,” explains Nash. “At the time, the NIT was considered just as prestigious as the NCAA. But we decided that we’d already been to New York, so now we should give this NCAA thing a try.”

But first, the ’Bows had another appearance to make.

On Saturday, March 4, the entire team was scheduled to make a public appearance at Fort Street Mall in downtown Honolulu. The event quickly erupted into a wild and chaotic free-for-all – the next day’s headline would read, “Rainbows Caught in Fort Street Maul” – as an estimated 8,000 fans showed up for handshakes and autographs. The Honolulu Advertiser’s Bruce Spinks reported that team members were “descended upon immediately, disappearing beneath a sea of palms, pads and pencils.”

“Oh yeah, that day got a little hairy,” Holiday recalls, laughing.

“It was surreal,” remembers Nash.

Finally, the big day: Saturday, March 11. The NCAA Tournament first-round game between Hawai‘i and Weber State in Pocatello, Idaho.

The next day’s front page headline said it all: “It’s Only a Game (Sob!)”

Playing at 4,462 feet above sea level, the Big Sky Conference champion Wildcats dominated Hawai‘i, 91-64. The Rainbow Warriors shot just 24 of 72 from the field (.333). Four starters fouled out of the game, and the fifth starter, Freeman, had four fouls. In all, Hawai‘i was assessed 35 fouls, Weber State just 16. The Wildcats had 52 free throw attempts.

Recalls Nash, “It was a big shock to us in the sense that we were playing on a court in the middle of a football stadium. It was different. We also had to play at altitude. We were a fast-paced team and the altitude just took that pace away from us. We had to play a slower game and that wasn’t our strength.”

Penebacker agrees. “The fact is, we didn’t go there early enough to acclimate to the altitude. We really suffered. We also played in the middle of an indoor football arena. There was no background. The fans were 20 yards away. It was just a situation where we didn’t have enough time to adjust to our surroundings.”

If the Rainbow Warriors had gotten by the Wildcats, their next game would have been against Bill Walton and the defending national champion UCLA Bruins. 

The “Fabulous Five” era had come to an end, but even now, 50 years later, the memories endure. As do the unbreakable bonds that were formed.

“We played with each other, we played for each other and over time we became a family,” says Davis. “And the fans were a big part of it. The fans made us an ‘ohana.”

Adds Holiday, “It’s definitely a brotherhood. You can’t achieve what we achieved without having a love for the game and for each other.”

In 1982, the Fabulous Five teams were part of the inaugural class of inductees in the UH Sports Circle of Honor. Nash was inducted as an individual honoree in 2019 after spending 29 years as a Rainbow Warrior assistant coach, associate head coach and head coach.

Nash, Freeman, Penebacker, Davis and Holiday still call Hawai‘i home.

“All five of us still live here,” says Freeman. “I’d rather be here than anywhere else. I talked to Al just a couple of days ago. I see Dwight almost once a week. We get together to watch some basketball. To all the fans, I want to say ‘Thank You’ for everything you did for me and the Fabulous Five team. It was only for two years. I wish it could have been four!”

“Jerome, Dwight and Penebacker - their birthdays are all in December,” says Nash. “And me and Al, our birthdays are in August. So we normally get together every December or August to celebrate our birthdays together. We pick a restaurant, have a few adult beverages and talk about how great we were and still are and all that kinda stuff. We have a good time.”

NOTE: Lance Tominaga is the Web Editor for ESPN Honolulu and a lifelong UH basketball fan. His earliest sports memories were watching the Fabulous Five games on TV.