Greg Yamamoto | SL

Purchase image 1 of 1

Fri, Jan 17, 2014 @ Kalaheo

---

Farrington

54

Kalaheo

58

Final	1	2	3	4
Farrington (10-1, 26-5)	7	10	18	19	54
Kalaheo (11-3, 26-10)	12	15	13	18	58

• Points
• Rebounds
• Assists

K. Smith 19 pts  2 3pm  3/4 FTs

V. Hugo 16 pts  4/4 FTs

K. Harrison 8 tot  1 off  7 def

T. Unutoa 9 tot  5 off  4 def

D. Delcastillo 2 ast

V. Hugo 2 ast

Allan Silva has been a basketball coach at various levels for nearly 40 years, but at his core he is a teacher. Not just on the court, but in the classroom as well.

That's why Silva, who worked 32 years within the state's Department of Education before retiring a few years ago, never shied away from turning adversity into learning experiences for his students. And that goes for his basketball players, too.

Such was the case on Jan. 17, 2014, when Silva's Farrington boys basketball team suffered their first loss of the regular season at the hands of host Kalaheo.

The 58-54 loss to the Mustangs was one of just five Farrington was dealt that year — three of those coming in the preseason — and its' last defeat until Feb. 22, when it saw a 10-game win streak snapped by Iolani in the Division I state championship game.

In hindsight, Silva called the four-point loss to Kalaheo a "blessing in disguise."

Why is that? Well, consider the following.

The Govs played that game without three seniors (who were in California for an all-star football game) in 6-foot-5 Mason Semisi and 6-2 Manly "Pumba" Williams, as well as their leading scorer in 6-3 Jacob McEnroe — who went on to be selected as All-Oahu Interscholastic Association Eastern Division Player of the Year in addition to earning All-Hawaii First Team honors that season.

"It was a blessing in disguise because the guys who were playing behind some of those other players realized that they can play this game also," Silva said.

Farrington got off to a slow start in the contest and trailed 12-7 after one quarter and 27-17 at the half.

"At half we just told them, ‘Hey guys, you're in the game. Just play your game,' and you know, the crowd is loud and boisterous by then, but I just told them, ‘Just play your game.' That's one thing this team could do, they could really focus and leading up to the game, a lot of things they did in practice, they did in the game, so it was great to see," Silva said.

Silva's team was able to chip away in the second half and cut the Kalaheo lead to 40-35 to start the fourth quarter.

"We just chipped away slowly. A lot of teams when they're behind they want to go for that 20-yard gain, so to speak, but I usually tell my players that we'll just chip away one basket at a time, one basket at a time," Silva said. "I remember reading a book years ago and it said, ‘Inch-by-inch, it's a cinch. Yard-by-yard, it's hard,' so we just chip away, chip away and stayed in our game plan."

The Govs eventually cut it to a two-point game in the closing minutes, but were unable to complete the comeback.

Still, the fight that Silva's team showed that night revealed an inner fortitude in his players that he was most certainly proud of.

"That was the difference with this team: these guys never gave up and they played together as a team," Silva said. "That was basically the Farrington spirit."

Going forward after the loss, Silva said he noticed an improvement in confidence and camaraderie amongst his players. That was especially true with those who stepped up in the absence of the senior trio.

Van Hugo scored a team-high 16 points to go along with three rebounds, two assists and two steaks, Tua Unutoa recorded 12 points and nine rebounds, Isaiah Visoria tallied 11 points, four rebounds, four steals and an assist and Isaiah Smith added eight points, four steals and three boards.

"Throughout the season I would speak to them individually and tell them to keep doing what they were doing, but even when these guys were on the bench or not playing, they supported each other. Everybody supported each other and there was no time that I was not able to make a sub — no matter if it was a McEnroe or a Pumba, I could sub them — and these players really were ready to play," Silva said.

But so were the Mustangs that night. They were led by sophomore Kekai Smith and junior Kupaa Harrison, who combined to score 37 points. Smith, the nephew of then-Kalaheo coach Alika Smith, had 19 points, including a pair of 3-pointers, and five rebounds, two blocks and a steal, while Harrison turned in a 18-point, eight-rebound performance. He also recorded four blocks, three steals and two assists before fouling out with 1:50 left in the game.

Silva held Kekai Smith in high regard — "he could play at any level in college," Silva said — and implored his players to work as a team to overcome Kalaheo's pair of prolific scorers.

"Basically I told them that we're not going to beat them one-on-one. With five guys working together we can beat them, so defense was a key. We played a lot of man-to-man and of course, a lot of match-up zone," said Silva, who noted that one of his assistants, Len Scaduto, is a "master of the match-up zone."

"We had a combination, it was basically help-defense, work together and put pressure on the ball, that was the difference. Many teams would not put pressure on Kalaheo's guards. They would kind of stand back and then soon you've got Kekai Smith launching 3-pointers like they're free throws," he added.

Farrington's regular-season loss to Kalaheo was actually the third time the teams had met that year. The Govs took both preseason meetings off the Mustangs: a 40-36 win in the consolation bracket of the Punahou Invitational on Dec. 21 and a 68-38 drubbing in the seventh-place game of the Merv Lopes Classic on Dec. 30.

But the Mustangs were seemingly hitting their own stride by the time they met the Govs in the regular season. They had won three straight games entering the Farrington game, including a 53-47 win at Kaiser just two days prior and a 56-37 rout of Kailua the week prior.

"And Kailua and Kaiser were good teams, too," Silva said. "When I look back at that, playing (Kalaheo) and being successful in the preseason, the confidence level of the kids, internally they're self-taught and their mindset just went up to a whole different level."

If there was disappointment among the Govs following the loss to the Mustangs, they were certainly able to channel those frustrations appropriately, as evidenced by their next contest: a 30-point victory at Moanalua six days later.

In fact, Farrington closed out the regular season by winning its final five games by an average margin of victory of 22 points. But regardless of the final result, Silva noted that the team's postgame evaluation process never changed.

"Whether we win or lose a game we go around in the locker room and ask everybody, ‘What did you learn? What's you're takeaway from this game?' And then the second question will be something like, ‘What can you do better? What will you do better?,' " Silva said. "And the players come together and they make a declaration on what they're going to do better to improve this team — everybody, even the guys that didn't play that many minutes in the game. Always. Win or lose. What did you learn? What can we do better?

Silva scoffs at the word "failure."

"Some of the games we lost, that word comes around and people will say, ‘Oh, you guys failed. You didn't win,' and I'll say, ‘We didn't fail. We just got more information as to how we can beat them, so every event, every experience was a learning experience for them, win or lose," Silva said.

He would even go so far as to have the players applaud their mistakes in the locker room.

"Some of my players think I'm crazy. If we win a game, great. We applaud. But after the game we applaud all of their mistakes. Why applaud the mistakes? Because you're going to learn from that and what would you do different? Replay that in your mind and so their mindset moves to the positive as far as what they're going to do the next time," Silva said. "And they would do it."

As an educator himself, Silva never stopped learning. One of his mentors is the late Stan Kellner, an acclaimed high school and college basketball coach in New York. Charlotte Hornets' President of Basketball Operations and General Manager Mitch Kupchak played high school basketball under Kellner and called him the most influential coach he's had.

Silva recalled a time when he was coaching at Maryknoll and his team trailed big at the half against Iolani. Kellner happened to be in attendance that night.

"We were down by 20 points at the half. Twenty points," Silva recalled. "I'm burning and I can't wait to talk to these guys at halftime. … So we're walking into the locker room at Iolani and uncle Stan from New York is there at the game and he steps in front of me before I go in and asks to speak to them for one minute before I talk to them. I said, ‘Okay, coach, fine. Go ahead. One minute. You got it.'

"So uncle Stan walks into the locker room and what a learning experience for me. He starts talking to these kids and he says, ‘Guys, I know it was a tough half, but I want to tell you something right now,' and he starts pointing to every single player and he says, ‘Hey, nice rebound, great hustle. Hey, that was a great 3-pointer. Great free throw. Way to block your man out,' so he's talking to all the players and just praising them as far as what the good things they did right and in one minute the players heads went from down (looking at the floor), to everything (raises head up), the body language changed," Silva said.

Silva's team came back in the second half. It didn't win the game (lost by two points, as best as Silva can recall), but he learned a lesson as a coach that day that was more important than winning the ball game.

"Never rip a player and put him down because they're already down, so do what you can to build them up," he recited.

Silva has also learned over the years that no matter how much the coaches may want success, it ultimately comes down to the student-athletes ‘want to.'

He recalled a few instances where he would allow his players to conduct their own locker room talk during pregame or halftime.

"I would walk in there and say, ‘Guys, you know what we need to do, right? Okay, coaches, let's get out,' and I would tell the players to talk about what we need to do in this half and us coaches would get out of the locker room. We'd peek back in there after a little while and they're all together, they've got their hands up and they're gathering and the whole atmosphere has changed in there and you can see the chemistry come together," Silva said.

As for how the postseason turned out for Silva's 2013-2014 Farrington squad? It had a first-round bye in the 12-team OIA Division I tournament and punched its ticket to the state tournament with a 68-63 win over Roosevelt in the quarterfinal round. A 74-67 victory over Moanalua in the semifinals was the precursor to a 66-49 win over Western Division top-seed Campbell in the league final.

It was Farrington's first OIA basketball title since winning the D2 crown in 2011 and just the fourth in school history at the time.

"It's special for the school," Silva said of the championship. "I was happy as a coach, but I was more happy for these guys here because they'll never forget that for the rest of their lives and I talk to the players all the time, they call me or I'll text them."

The Govs drew the No. 2 overall seed in the HHSAA State Championships the following week. After a bye in the first round, they edged Mililani in the quarters, 46-44, to reach the semifinal round. There, they held off Interscholastic League of Honolulu runner-up Maryknoll, 63-57, before a date with top-seed and ILH champ Iolani in the state championship game.

However, the Raiders proved to be too much as they held off the Govs by a score of 43-40.

"They went to the dance and it's amazing, like I said, win or lose, you learn from that experience," Silva said. "It's not what medal you get that year, or how many wins you get that year, (but) it's what did you learn in that season? Because you know, 10, 15 years from now people are not going to even remember you won a state championship, but they'll never forget the spirit that you displayed on and off the court."

In the title game, McEnroe led the way for Farrington with a double-double of 16 points and 10 rebounds. He was the lone Governors selected to the all-tournament team.

Farrington completed the year with a 26-5 overall record and a 13-1 mark in league play.

The following season saw the Govs successfully defend their OIA championship and return to the state tournament.

"I look back and it was a very unselfish group of young men that never quit, ever," Silva said. "Over the years it's been good. Basketball has been a great game and the medals and all that are great, but it's about what they take away from the game even more. What happens in life after the court, after the game — that is the ultimate. I had a lot of success over at Farrington with wins and other things, but my main concern was what are they going to do after?"

After Silva, a 1975 Kailua graduate who went on to play collegiately at Chaminade, guided Farrington to a second straight league title in 2015, he departed the program for Saint Louis, where he coached for two seasons before stepping down.

Silva, who coached Farrington to two D2 state crowns in 2008 and 2011, has been an assistant coach for the semi-pro Hawaii Swish team since 2017. He also recently co-wrote a book entitled Aloha Social Emotional Learning despite retiring from the DOE.

"I'm too young to just retire and do nothing, so I'm doing other things right now," said Silva, who continues as an educational consultant for several schools and also conducts professional development for teachers throughout the year.

As far as a return to prep basketball? Silva is leaving that door open.

"Somebody asked me the other week if I would go back to high school basketball and I said, ‘Well, if the right opportunity showed up, yeah, I would do it,' " he said. "Because you know, when I watch games on TV, you never lose that fever for coaching and helping kids."

Who knows? Maybe they could even teach him a thing or two.