Tough teams await Wahine

This time last year, the Hawaii Rainbow Wahine received a Ph.D in perspective in their first three-game tournament.

Losing to basketball national powers Baylor and Stanford by a combined 62 points has a way of shaping young minds. Second-year coach Laura Beeman and her 1-1 UH team will try to apply those hard-earned lessons in the Bank of Hawaii Rainbow Wahine Classic, starting today at 7 p.m. against Washington State (0-1) of the Pac-12.

UH follows up with Ole Miss (1-1) of the Southeastern Conference on Saturday and West Virginia (0-1) of the Big 12 on Sunday.

"These are power conferences. The teams they play night in and night out are very different than what we play night in and night out," Beeman said. "So although the schedule doesn’t have the names of Baylor, Stanford, Oklahoma we had last year, the competition is equally good. … I don’t want to say equally daunting, but it’s close."

UH had to shake off the most punishing loss of Beeman’s young UH career less than a week ago. Arizona State rolled the Wahine by 40 in their season opener in Tempe, Ariz., but UH bounced back to defeat Northern Arizona 74-66 a day later in Flagstaff.

Like their back-to-back games on the road, the Wahine will again have little time to adjust to their next opponent once their first contest is over.

"After that it’s pretty much rapid fire," senior guard Sydney Haydel said. "You get your scouting report and then you watch film. You have to take in a lot of information very quickly."

UH is counting on the fact that other teams have the same dilemma. Ole Miss, a rebuilding program with a new coach, could offer UH the best chance at a win this weekend.

"It’s who turns up on the day," said junior Ashleigh Karaitiana, who acted as the team’s bench sparkplug in the first two games. "As long as we know we can play the best game we can play, win or lose, at least we know we’re getting better. At the end of the day, we’re preparing for conference season. That’s the biggest thing right now."

With the loss of two signed post players to academic ineligibility, Beeman’s biggest concern of the preseason was depth, and that hasn’t changed — especially with senior wing Shawna Kuehu questionable after landing hard to the court at NAU.

"We miss Kalei (Adolpho, with the UH volleyball team)," Beeman said. "It affects our guard rotation, it affects our post rotation. Shawna’s still not 100 percent. I don’t know when and if she will be (ready) going into this weekend. And then we have some youngsters who just aren’t ready to play. We’re going to have to play them, but they’re going to make some very bad, very obvious, blatant mistakes. Depending on where we are in the game, we may not be able to go with them."

One player who has impressed is junior point guard Morgan Mason. She has only three turnovers so far — including just two of UH’s 26 giveaways in the ASU rout.

Senior forward Kamilah Jackson (14.0 points per game, 7.0 rebounds) has led UH through the first two games. She is seventh in program history in points (1,225), needing 42 more to pass Kendis Leeburg for sixth place.