The University of Hawaii women’s basketball team is coming off a confidence-boosting win in the Big West Conference championship game over UC Santa Barbara, but that win cannot blind the Rainbow Wahine from the task ahead in March Madness.
“We’re really focused on playing our best basketball and doing what we know how to do,” UH senior Kallin Spiller said Wednesday. “All season it’s been about controlling what we can control, and obviously we have a talented team across the court from us in our next game. But at the end of the day it’s the same approach we’ve had — we need to be able to bring our best basketball every day this week in preparation.”
That team across the court happens to be LSU, a team that’s 28-2 in the powerful Southeastern Conference, seeded third in the region and ranked ninth in the country and coached by three-time NCAA title-winner Kim Mulkey. Furthermore, UH will be playing LSU on its home floor in Baton Rouge, La.
Their first-round matchup against the Tigers — scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Friday and to be televised on ESPN2 — places coach Laura Beeman’s team in an underdog role unlike what they’ve experienced, in an environment unlike any they’ve seen.
LSU’s women’s basketball broke record after record in fan attendance this season. Most recently, the Tigers set a Pete Maravich Assembly Center attendance record with 15,721 at their last regular season game against Mississippi State.
“Nerves are going to be there,” Beeman said on Wednesday. “You don’t walk into an arena that’s sold out on someone’s home court in the first round of the NCAA (Tournament) without any nerves. If that happened, I’d be concerned that my team would be flat. This is more than just enjoying the experience for us. … We’re here because it’s March Madness. Of course, we want to win, we want a huge upset.”
The Tigers also hosted their first two March Madness games at the PMAC last season. The fan turnout was better than the program has seen in a long time.
“I know how loud it was when we hosted last year,” Mulkey said on Sunday after the selection show. “I know how much the people were wanting seats.”
While the environment will present adversity, the team the Wahine are playing will present a challenge as well.
LSU certainly has an axe to grind, still sitting with a bad taste in its mouth from a loss in the SEC Tournament semifinals to Tennessee, a game in which LSU was favored.
The Tigers are led by the duo of Angel Reese and Alexis Morris, both of whom earned first-team All-SEC honors, with Reese being named a first-team All-American by the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Though the Tigers are the more nationally known team, Hawaii will not be a mystery to Mulkey, who happened to be watching the Rainbow Wahine’s win over UCSB. Little did she know her team would be playing UH next.
“I watched Hawaii come back and beat Santa Barbara,” said Mulkey, referring to the Wahine’s rally from a 15-point halftime deficit — and double digits in the fourth quarter — to beat the Gauchos 61-59 last Saturday.
In another coincidence, Hawaii was eliminated in the first round of last year’s NCAA Tournament with an 89-49 loss to Baylor. Mulkey coached at Baylor from 2000 to 2021, winning three national championships.
Mulkey is one of the most renowned coaches in all of college basketball. The Louisiana native has won the Associated Press College Basketball Coach of the Year three times, most recently in 2021. This season, she’s a semifinalist for the Naismith Women’s College Basketball Coach of the Year.
“What she’s done speaks for itself. She’s a winner,” Beeman said. “Every place she goes, she wins. … I have the utmost respect for her and what she’s done on the court. She is obviously one of the trailblazers in the women’s game. She has put the work in, she turned LSU around quickly, and that only goes to show what kind of coach she is.”
Mulkey has some thoughts on the Rainbow Wahine despite watching Hawaii in the Big West championship for only a short time.
“Hawaii shoots a lot of 3s, from what I saw,” Mulkey said. “But yet they also have inside play. Not big, but in their league, they weren’t afraid to split screens and post up.”
Give her more time to study how the Rainbow Wahine play, and she will have her team ready. And that makes the challenge even more daunting for the Wahine.
