Thanks to a bounce-back performance, Hawaii jumped back to the front of the Big West women’s basketball race.
Two days after seeing a furious rally foiled in a last-second loss, the Rainbow Wahine started hot and remained ahead for all but three and a half minutes in a 67-57 win over UC Irvine that pushed them back into the conference lead on Saturday at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.
On Thursday, the Wahine stormed back from a 16-point deficit to catch UC San Diego, only to see the Tritons score in the final two seconds and celebrate a 62-60 win that dropped UH behind UC Irvine in the standings.
Resilience was the theme for Friday’s practice, and the Wahine (13-9, 9-3 Big West) responded by sweeping the season series with the Anteaters (15-10, 10-4) and moving ahead in the standings based on winning percentage.
“I’m not surprised that we bounced back,” UH coach Laura Beeman said. “The energy in practice was, ‘OK, back to the drawing board.’ It wasn’t a pity party, it wasn’t excuses, it was just we’ve gotta play better.”
UH’s collective response mirrored that of forward Amy Atwell, who shook off a rough shooting night against UC San Diego by scoring a game-high 25 points and setting a career high with 13 rebounds.
Atwell, the Big West’s leading scorer entering the week, struggled to a 1-for-9 shooting performance on Thursday and finished with a season-low four points. She hit her first two 3-pointers in Saturday’s matinee as part of a blistering start for the Wahine and erased UH’s lone deficit of the game with a personal seven-point run in a 16-second span in the second quarter.
“I just didn’t want to play that badly twice in a row,” said Atwell, who went 7-for-13 overall, 5-for-7 from 3-point range and 6-for-6 at the free-throw line.
“Throughout my career I feel like I’ve always had that bounce-back. Thursday wasn’t my best game offensively or defensively and I knew I needed to come out and do my job for our team.”
UH center Kallin Spiller scored nine of her 15 points in an 11-2 Wahine run to open the third quarter and finished 6-for-7 from the field and blocked two shots. Guard Daejah Phillips served as a facilitator in her 20 minutes on the court and tied her career best with six assists before being shaken up in the third quarter and dealing with foul trouble for most of the second half.
UH opened the game by hitting nine of its first 11 shots from the field to take a 21-16 lead. After Olivia Davies hit a 3-pointer, a scoreboard malfunction kept the UH point total rolling into triple digits, prompting a delay while the arena staff addressed the issue.
While the teams tried to keep warm in the break, the extended pause may have helped lighten the mood.
“Since we came out on Thursday and played tight, we were able to laugh at the score going over 100 and have a moment to step back and be like, ‘Hey, we’re in this game,’” Spiller said. “I don’t think it hindered us at all and we came back strong for sure.”
UH did cool off early in the second quarter and UC Irvine surged ahead with a 15-2 run to open the quarter.
Atwell answered by scoring on a drive while drawing a foul and converted the three-point play. After grabbing a rebound, she drained a 3-pointer from the top of the key and was knocked to the floor. Her free throw gave UH a 34-31 lead and the Wahine didn’t trail again. In all, UH held the lead for 36 minutes, 32 seconds.
“They had their run and we had a few poor offensive possessions in a row,” Atwell said. “(UH assistant coach) Alex (Delanian) called a play for me and I was like, ‘OK, it’s go time.’ ”
The Wahine held UC Irvine to 7-for-24 shooting from the field in the second half after guards Kayla Williams and Jayde Cadee combined for seven 3-pointers in the first half. The duo managed just one 3-pointer between them after halftime and accounted for 11 points.
Williams led the Anteaters with 21 points and Cadee scored 12 of her 14 points in the first half.
“We talked about the urgency of getting a closeout and touching the ball when it’s in their shooting pocket,” Beeman said. “If you’re not there that quickly on those shooters, they’re going to shoot it over you and score. The girls did a phenomenal job of making that adjustment at halftime.”
The Wahine will take the conference lead into their final road trip of the regular season, playing at Cal State Bakersfield (3-16, 2-8) on Thursday and at Cal Poly (3-17, 2-9) on Saturday.
