You don't win college basketball games in the first two minutes and 15 seconds ... or do you?

Before some of the green- and white-clad crowd had even settled into its seats last night, you had a pretty good idea the University of Hawai'i men were on the road to victory over Nevada-Las Vegas.

It was only 6-3 UH after Julian Sensley hit a mid-range jumper at the 17:45 mark, but such was the import of the moment that there was an audible sigh of relief among the assembled 6,867 at the Stan Sheriff Center.

It was where UH coach Riley Wallace appeared to exhale, the Rainbow Warriors' confidence rose, and you knew all was right with the world again — or at least the 94-foot long portion of it the 'Bows call home en route to an eventual 78-72 victory.

With that opening salvo, Sensley was on the way from turning the corner from his most imperfect performance to close to perfection. He traded in his worst night (no points at UNLV) to his highest-scoring one, 28 points.

Now, nobody really thought the Rebels could hold Sensley scoreless for two halves again. But who would have imagined what had happened on Nov. 22 in Las Vegas where Sensley went 0 for 11 would have occurred in the first place?

As Sensley has put it, "That had never happened to me before."

So the drama heading into last night's game wasn't so much whether UH could turn the tables on UNLV, but whether Sensley would confront his darkest hour and conquer it. For if Sensley returned to form there was little doubt so, too, would the now 3-1 'Bows.

The answer — and the significance it held — was not long in coming. When Sensley hit that shot from the right side, the first of 10 field goals in 15 attempts he would make on the night, the die was cast. When he went on a 10-point tear in a span of 3 minutes, 47 seconds in the second half, it was only a matter of what the final score would be.

"He got a couple shots down early and got his confidence up and got it rolling," said Lon Kruger, the UNLV coach. "When you make a couple (early), it makes a big difference."

For sure it did last night when the real Sensley stepped forward and took UNLV out of this one.

"Personally I took it kind of personal," Sensley would say later. "I couldn't let anything like that happen again."

While Sensley would say he knew when he got up yesterday that things would definitely be different — "the sun was shining and I knew it was going to be a good game" — his coaches saw it coming even further out.

"His preparation the last eight days was the key; that's where you saw it coming," said assistant coach Bob Nash. Said Wallace: "He was on a mission since that Las Vegas game."

From the time Sensley hit that first shot, you knew it was mission probable for the 'Bows.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.