The Hawaii women’s basketball team enjoyed a rare Thursday night with games only to watch and not to play.
As one of two teams that had their first conference bye fall during the early-December window when the Big West scheduled its first full weekend of games, the Rainbow Wahine haven’t had a break from the two games at home, two games on the road weekly rotation since it began on Jan. 2.
That 2025 calendar year opener at UC Santa Barbara also marks the last time UH has lost a basketball game.
A 13-game winning streak has catapulted the Rainbow Wahine (19-6, 13-2 Big West) into the driver’s seat at the top of the conference standings heading into Saturday’s game against UC San Diego.
If there was one team remaining on the schedule that UH could have used a full week to prepare for, it is the Tritons.
UCSD (14-13, 10-5) came the closest to ending UH’s winning streak, losing by two in overtime on Jan. 30 with an open look at the end of regulation to win rolling around the rim and out.
The Tritons are 4-1 since the loss to UH and one game behind UC Irvine for second place and one of the two double byes in the conference tournament.
“The bye comes at a perfect time for us,” Hawaii coach Laura Beeman said at her weekly media session on Tuesday. “The travel every other week has been difficult. This is a game that as much as we want the week off and to be able to take a deep breath, you can’t overlook a team like this at all.”
Hawaii entered the week as one of 12 teams with an active winning streak of at least 13 games.
It’s the seventh longest in program history and two away from matching the longest of Beeman’s tenure at UH, when the Wahine won 15 in a row in the 2014-15 season.
Hawaii went on to lose in the Big West tournament final that year, which is what the Rainbow Wahine want to avoid this season.
“These kids aren’t going to care if we win 13 games in a row if we don’t win a championship,” Beeman said. “Winning is really fun, and so after each win we want to talk about the good, the bad, the ugly. I don’t think we’re getting wrapped up in the number of wins we’re stringing together. I think it’s where you are putting your attention.”
With six seniors on the active roster, including two who have been in the program for five seasons, the record books are starting to take on a major edit.
Guards MeiLani McBee and Kelsie Imai are now the top two players in school history in games played with McBee at 133 and Imai at 129.
Guard Lily Wahinekapu recently joined UH’s 1,000-point scoring club and is 24th on the school’s career list.
McBee is second in 3-pointers made, eight shy of Amy Atwell’s record of 205, and Imai surpassed 300 career assists last week, moving into seventh place on the school’s all-time list with 304.
“I always say that I enjoy getting my teammates open baskets and getting looks instead of scoring on my own,” Imai said. “It’s something I wasn’t aware of, but it’s a cool accomplishment I guess.”
Imai, a Waiakea alumna, has been a sparkplug for Hawaii since the very beginning of her UH career.
She’s stepped up her game over the past month, reaching double figures in scoring for the first three times.
In a critical win over UC Irvine on Saturday, she played 33 minutes and turned the ball over only one time. She also made all six of her free-throw attempts and has gotten to the line 38 times in the past six games shooting 76.3% (29-for-38).
“We’ve all watched Kelsie from her freshman year come in and throw the ball wherever, not even really think about stuff like that, and now to see her kind of reach those things that were unreachable for her is fun to see,” Beeman said. “The one thing that Kelsie has always brought is the grit, is the feistiness, is the effort, is kind of the pitbull if you will. I’ve kind of joked about that for four years. She’s my pitbull.”
Following Saturday’s game, Hawaii will play its final two regular-season road games at UC Riverside and UC Davis before playing its last two home games March 6 and 8 against Cal State Bakersfield and Cal State Northridge. Two wins in the final five games would guarantee a double bye in the conference tournament and three wins would result in locking up the No. 1 seed.
