Iolani's Hugh Hogland elevates for a slam dunk against Saint Louis. Hogland scored 12 points in a win over the Crusaders. John Lujan | Special to SL

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Sat, Jan 30, 2016 @ Iolani

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Saint Louis

31

Iolani

59

Final	1	2	3	4
Saint Louis (7-6, 21-8)	8	5	8	10	31
Iolani (9-5, 19-9)	16	18	14	11	59

Z. Gelacio 13 pts  2 3pm  3/4 FTs

T. Nichols 16 pts  1 3pm  1/4 FTs

"On any given night…" certainly applies to the Interscholastic League of Honolulu Division I boys' basketball season.

No. 4 Iolani might have played its best defense of the season in romp of No. 3 Saint Louis, 59-31, Saturday night at the Raiders' lower gym.

"This is the toughest league in Hawaii," Saint Louis coach Allan Silva said. "On any given night, anybody can blow anybody out. It doesn't matter who we're playing. Everybody's tough."

The loss, though, turns out not to be as devastating for the Crusaders (6-2), as Punahou beat No. 1 Kamehameha, 58-41. The Raiders, Buffanblu and Warriors now share second place with 4-4 records. Saint Louis needs to win one of its two remaining games to clinch the regular-season title.

"I don't know how the rest of the league is going to play out, but we have to be playing our best basketball at the end going into the ILH tournament because whether we're successful at the end of the (regular) season or not, we gotta be good playing for that tournament, so we're just trying to get better, really," Iolani coach Dean Shimamoto said.

The regular-season title comes with one of the league's two Division I state berths, as well as home-court advantage throughout the ILH tournament, which determines the league's second state berth. If the regular season and tournament champions are different, an overall playoff determines who gets the seeded berth for the state tournament.

"We didn't bring our game tonight," Silva said. "Our outside shooting wasn't there, even our inside game wasn't there, but give it to Iolani. They played an excellent game tonight. We didn't play our game. Period. Simple things we didn't do."

Iolani denied any sort of outside shooting by Saint Louis. Only three of the Crusaders' 13 field goals were from outside the paint, two of them 3-pointers. One of the ILH's top scorers, guard Jaymason Nunuha did not make a field goal. His only two points came on free throws.

"We just tried to pay attention to him all the time," Shimamoto said of Nunuha. "We know how good he is. He can hit it from range, he can go to the basket. He's a very dynamic player and we wanted to make sure where he was at all times."

Taking on that task was guard Helam Baldemero.

"He's a big threat out there," Iolani center Hugh Hogland said of Nunuha. "So we put our best defender, Helam Baldemero (on Nunuha). So Coach Cord (Anderson) is buying him lunch for shutting him down, so that's pretty funny. Helam did a great job."

The 6-foot-9 Hogland was not bad either, chipping in a modest 12 points with a staggering 19 rebounds. He was up against 6-6 Tristan Nichols, who can be dominating himself under the basket. Despite Hogland's performance, Nichols still managed to lead all scorers with 16 points.

"Anytime you see someone play that way against Nichols, you know it's a good performance," Shimamoto said of Hogland. "Hugh was tough on defense, he was aggressive on offense. He was passing it well. He really did a little everything for us, but a lot of guys made a lot of small contributions. I think this was as good a team win we've had this season."

Zach Gelacio led the Raiders with 13 points, including two 3-pointers. Robby Mann also had 12 points, seven in the second half. Besides playing good defense, Baldemero chipped in nine points, including two 3-pointers.

Iolani took control from the start. It took a commanding 34-13 lead into the half. Only two different Crusaders scored in the first half: Nichols and Noa Purcell.

Iolani, meanwhile, was allowed to clear its bench in the fourth quarter.

Iolani visits Mid-Pacific on Tuesday and hosts Maryknoll on Thursday. Saint Louis visits Kamehameha on Tuesday and hosts Punahou on Thursday.