LAHAINA, Hawaii -- For Virginia and Kentucky, it's high time to prove that the sins of last year are ancient history.

For Indiana and Gonzaga, it's high time to prove that the stars of last year are ancient history as well.

Those are your motivations for Tuesday's Maui Invitational semifinals -- motivation enough to keep players' minds on ball before beach. Everyone has something to prove. Everyone is playing for something beyond just the title of Hawaiian Kings.

	Zack Gourde and the Zags rolled past Utah into a semifinal matchup with Indiana.

The first semi pits two teams that wobbled badly through the latter stages of last season.

Virginia lost 10 of its last 13, blowing an NCAA Tournament bid and bowing out meekly in the NIT first round. The Cavaliers surrendered 50-percent shooting to their final seven opponents, flatly capitulating down the stretch.

Kentucky finished 7-5, torn apart by discipline problems and internal strife. A modest run to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen -- UK beat teams seeded 12th and 13th to get there -- alleviated a little of the sour taste, but not all of it.

Monday both teams got a good leg up on redemption.

In a 20-year rematch of the biggest upset in college basketball history, when NAIA Chaminade beat No. 1 Virginia, the Cavs rolled the Silverswords 86-72. They did it with the world's tallest testament to the fact that anything can happen in Hawaii watching from the bleachers.

Aloha, Ralph Sampson. Still large after all these years.

Lose focus and lose games. It's a legitimate danger here, where the waves are big and the bikinis small. It's happened before on the islands, where Ball State beat Kansas and UCLA in 2001, Dayton beat Connecticut in 2000 and, two decades ago, the Silverswords beat 7-foot-4 Ralph and the gang.

It would be fair to say that game was on everyone's minds Monday morning in Maui.

"It's a lose-lose situation," Virginia coach Pete Gillen said. "If we lose we're bums, the coaches are bums, the players are bums ...

"People were saying, 'Chaminade's gonna beat you again.' National execution on TV."

Despite that, Chaminade coach Aaron Griess is convinced that the Cavaliers still approached the game cavalierly.

"They came in here relaxed," Griess said. "They thought they were going to just run right over us. There's no doubt in my mind. I saw it in their eyes that they thought it was going to be a cake walk, and we weren't going to let it be a cake walk."

It wasn't a cake walk. Chaminade briefly had the lead in the second half before Virginia's big-man tandem of Travis Watson (16 points, 14 rebounds) and Elton Brown took over the game.

Senior Watson is Mr. Reliable for Virginia. Sophomore Brown was emblematic of the late-season fade last year. After a strong start to his college career, he averaged just 3.8 points over the Cavs' final 10 games.

Monday, "E" showed why he's such a tantalizing talent. The 6-9, 270-pounder had 22 points in 22 minutes off the bench, including a 3-pointer, shining when Watson got into foul trouble.

	“	Too low ... Too low. I have no idea who's voting on it, but they're not really giving us a very good look. ”
		— Mike Davis, on Indiana's preseason rankings

Kentucky had an easier time against tougher competition, blowing by scatter-shooting Arizona State 82-65. The Wildcats got a high-energy game from junior-college transfer Antwain Barbour (13 points), strong inside play from Marquis Estill (14) and an I'm-back performance from senior guard Keith Bogans: teams highs of 20 points, seven rebounds and four assists.

Bogans slumped horribly shooting the ball almost all last year, and it affected his all-around play. For a miserable stretch last February, every time he left the ground to shoot he seemed to have the weight of NBA aspirations weighing on his shoulders.

Monday night, made 7 of 10 shots, including 3 of 4 threes, letting the game come to him instead of forcing the issue and forcing shots.

"He's our All-American and we expect him to play like that night in and night out," Tubby Smith said.

Indiana and Gonzaga both lost their All-Americans, but emphatically showed Monday that they didn't lose everything.

If you believe the preseason rankings and predictions, the Hoosiers went from national runnerups to national afterthoughts. Almost nobody ranked them in the top 15, and Sports Illustrated bestowed the ultimate bouquet of disrespect:

It ranked Indiana 37th.

Of course, SI also decried the death of fundamentals in its college basketball preview -- and then posed Arizona's Jason Gardner and Luke Walton throwing behind-the-back passes on the cover.

But seriously, 37th?

"We just sat around and laughed at that," Indiana guard Tom Coverdale said.

Coach Mike Davis failed to find the mirth in it when the subject of national rankings was raised on the island.

"Too low," he said after the Hoosiers torched Massachusetts 84-71. "Too low."

Davis is still trying to figure out how Indiana made the title game and wound up ranked third in the final ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll, behind both Maryland and semifinal loser Kansas. Then came the preseason rankings this year, that dropped the Hoosiers well behind the other Final Four teams of last year.

"I have no idea who's voting on it," Davis said, "but they're not really giving us a very good look."

That's probably because Indiana lost leading scorer and rebounder Jared Jeffries to the NBA lottery after his sophomore year. But that team was more than just Jeffries, and so is this one.

Indiana might be the best perimeter shooting team in America (it made 12 threes Monday against Massachusetts, from six different players). And if George Leach's coming-out party against UMass becomes a regular thing, the Hoosiers might not drop off at all.

Bill Russell -- OK, the poorest of a poor man's Bill Russell -- inhabited Leach's body Monday afternoon in Lahaina. Leach produced a career-high 19 points, a career-high 16 rebounds and four blocked shots, by far the junior's best performance in an Indiana uniform.

"If he plays like this the whole year, we're going to be a really good team," Coverdale said.

Better than 37th, that's for sure.

If Indiana is stepping toward life after JJ, Gonzaga is now transitioning into life after DD. That's Dan Dickau, the Bulldogs' first first-team All-American and the guy who led them to a school-record 29 victories last year.

Without Dickau, Gonzaga will attack by committee -- the most prominent committee members being Ronny Turiaf, Blake Stepp and Zach Gourde. Eight Zags played at least 16 minutes in a 71-52 blowout of offensively deficient Utah, led by Turiaf's career-high 24 points and eight rebounds. No other starter hit double figues, however, with Kyle Blankhead coming off the bench to notch 10 in 23 minutes.

"I tried to play hard, with a lot of energy," said Turiaf, who made 15 of 16 free throws. "I don't know why, but I scored 24. I didn't come looking to score."

(Utah didn't help itself in the first half by shooting a barely conceivable 1 for 11 from the foul line. Rick Majerus said his team would struggle this year, and he clearly wasn't sand-bagging.)

"The one thing we have that maybe we haven't had in the past is great depth," Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. "We can absorb some foul trouble or sickness here and there. In a three-game tournament it's nice to have."