Hawaii Pacific Sharks

The Hawaii Pacific Sharks bring Division II basketball to Honolulu, giving the islands a rare mainland-style NCAA program to root for. Playing in the PacWest, HPU's basketball team travels farther than almost anyone else in the conference for road games, a defining quirk of island-based college athletics.

Hawaii Pacific University was founded in 1965 as Hawaii Pacific College. Its athletic programs joined the Pacific West Conference in the 1998-99 academic year and have competed there since, with the geographic isolation of playing from Honolulu shaping much of the program's travel-heavy story.