For the last three years, Selection Monday held little allure for Destiny King.

“I didn’t even want to look at it,” King said of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament selection special.

This time, King and her Rainbow Wahine teammates and coaches will have their attention fixed on the show when the NCAA tournament field is announced today, anticipating that delicious moment when “Hawaii” appears on the screen.

Just about 24 hours after capturing the Big West tournament championship, the Rainbow Wahine returned to Manoa on Sunday and will find out their next opponent and destination when the 64-team NCAA tournament bracket is revealed in the selection show today at 1 p.m. on ESPN.

UH (21-10) will make its sixth NCAA tournament appearance and first since 1998 this week. The tournament opens Friday with the first two rounds to be played at campus sites.

UH is at No. 105 in the NCAA RPI as of Sunday and coach Laura Beeman said the staff took some guesses at where the Wahine might be headed, “but nothing that has any substance to it.

“Hopefully we don’t have to leave until Wednesday morning or Wednesday afternoon so these guys can get a couple of days in the classroom, make them feel a little bit more connected,” Beeman said. “They know how to travel, we travel well. I think they enjoy traveling and there will be huge excitement for this type of travel.”

While the staff started sorting out some of the logistics of the team’s next trip, the Wahine returned to Hawaii on Sunday still savoring Saturday’s 78-59 win over UC Davis in the Big West tournament championship game in Anaheim, Calif.

Senior Ashleigh Karaitiana, the tournament MVP, carried the tournament trophy off the bus when the Wahine disembarked outside the Stan Sheriff Center.

Karaitiana and King are among the UH seniors who experienced the disappointment of three Big West tournament defeats, including a loss in the final last year that served as motivation for this season.

“We knew what it felt like to lose that championship game,” Karaitiana said.

Karaitiana led the Wahine with 17 points in the win that secured UH a place in the NCAA tournament after three straight WNIT appearances. Karaitiana said the Wahine are “definitely excited to see who we’re going to be facing, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter who we’re going to face because we’re going to play Hawaii basketball and execute our stuff.”

After celebrating UH’s dual titles with the men’s team on Saturday, Beeman said the emotion continued to build throughout the journey home.

“I had tears after the game last night and as the day goes on I’m getting more and more emotional just at how proud I am of these guys and the support we’re getting,” she said. “We were in the LAX terminal and people were coming up to us. We got on the plane and the girls couldn’t walk down the aisle, people coming up and taking pictures and just ‘thank you for representing the state.’ ”

As much as the Wahine are relishing their rewarding weekend in Anaheim, it didn’t take long for them to start looking at the next step.

“As a team we already talked about it,” King said. “Of course, we’re going to enjoy this. This is something we wanted, but the NCAA is also something we wanted. We want to make a statement at the NCAA, we don’t just want to just have an appearance. We want to make a real big statement.”