The Hawaii women’s basketball team already had a celebration planned for senior night on Saturday.
Thursday was also a night of celebration for the Rainbow Wahine, who decided to cut down the nets after securing a third regular-season Big West Conference championship in four years with a 66-51 win over Cal State Bakersfield.
A SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 1,122 hung around to watch acting athletics director Lois Mann hand Hawaii coach Laura Beeman the regular-season BWC championship trophy.
The team and coaching staff then took turns cutting down a net, both to celebrate a major accomplishment and to get it done in advance of Saturday’s emotional send off for six seniors.
“I’m trying to take the coaching hat off right now and enjoy this moment because too often I don’t,” Beeman said. “What this group has done thus far is super special. We’re not done, but for tonight, we’re going to enjoy what they did.”
Hawaii (21-8, 15-4) would have to lose to Cal State Northridge and UC Irvine would need to beat UC Davis on Saturday for UH to share its title.
Senior point guard Kelsie Imai, who scored a game-high 12 points to lead three Rainbow Wahine in double figures, was focused more on what lies ahead than what had just transpired on the court.
“It’s always fun (cutting down the nets), but the bigger picture is winning the tournament and getting to the NCAA Championships,” Imai said. “We got to celebrate tonight but we’ve still got some growth to make and we’re excited to go into next week and ready to play.”
Hawaii is the No. 1 seed in the tournament and will begin play on Friday in the semifinals at 9 a.m.
UH started 0-2 in conference play before rattling off 14 straight wins. It is 15-2 in its last 17 games.
“You’ve got to believe in your process and when you start off conference 0-2, the girls are kind of like, wait, is this process really working?” Beeman said. “You just have to keep the faith in what you have been working on every day.”
The Rainbow Wahine got 11 points from Lily Wahinekapu and 10 from Imani Perez in a game in which UH surprisingly trailed in the second quarter to a Cal State Bakersfield, which has lost 28 of its 30 games this season.
The Roadrunners (2-28, 2-18) closed the first quarter on a 7-0 run and held Hawaii scoreless over the final four minutes, 24 seconds.
Ary Dizon drained a 3-pointer on the Roadrunners’ opening possession of the second quarter to 16-10 as a hush fell over the crowd.
That woke up the Rainbow Wahine, who used a three-quarter court pressure to not give up another point over a stretch of more than nine minutes. UH scored 19. Consecutive points with Brooklyn Rewers, one of the seniors who will be honored on Saturday, and Jade Peacock closing the run with consecutive 3-pointers.
“Our intensity is bad and so that was a way to get our intensity up,” Beeman said of going to the press. “It definitely affected them and kind of got us going a little bit.”
Hawaii poured it on in the third quarter with Perez and Jovi Lefotu scoring six points apiece.
Lefotu made back-to-back layups to give UH its largest lead of the game at 48-24 in the third quarter.
She finished with eight points and Rewers also had eight points off the bench and connected on two 3-pointers.
Hawaii got 25 points from its bench and forced 22 turnovers with 10 steals.
BIG WEST WOMEN
Conference Overall
W L Pct. GB W L
Hawaii 15 4 .789 — 21 8
UC Irvine 14 5 .737 1 20 9
UC San Diego 13 6 .684 2 17 14
UC Davis 12 7 .632 3 18 11
UCSB 12 7 .632 3 18 11
Long Beach St. 11 8 .579 4 15 13
UC Riverside 11 8 .579 4 15 14
Cal Poly 8 11 .421 7 13 16
CS Fullerton 5 14 .263 10 7 22
CS Northridge 2 17 .105 13 4 24
CSU Bakersfield 2 18 .100 131
⁄2 2 28
Thursday
Hawaii 66, Cal State Bakersfield 51
UC Riverside 77, CS Northridge 74, OT
UC San Diego 82, Long Beach State 51
UC Irvine 55, UC Davis 53
Cal Poly 68, Cal State Fullerton 62
Saturday
Cal State Northridge at Hawaii, 7 p.m.
UC Santa Barbara at UC Irvine
UC Davis at UC San Diego
Long Beach State at Cal Poly
Cal State Fullerton at UC Riverside
End regular season
HAWAII 66, CAL STATE BAKERSFIELD 51
ROADRUNNERS (2-28, 2-18 Big West)
NO. PLAYER MIN FG-A 3PT FT-A O-DREB TREB A PF TO BLK STL PTS
34 Forney 24 5-7 0-1 0-0 1-4 5 1 1 1 0 2 10
02 Gingras 31 2-8 2-7 2-2 0-1 1 0 2 1 0 0 8
11 Caldwell 34 2-5 0-2 0-0 1-3 4 1 4 0 1 1 4
04 Dizon 24 1-3 1-2 0-0 1-5 6 3 0 11 1 0 3
32 Freeman 27 1-4 0-0 0-0 1-3 4 2 1 0 0 1 2
20 Secchiaroli 26 5-11 1-4 0-0 0-0 0 2 1 0 0 1 11
08 Langi 13 3-7 1-5 2-4 0-4 4 3 0 3 0 0 9
30 Dioli 15 2-6 0-3 0-0 0-1 1 0 0 0 0 0 4
55 Slocum 6 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 1 0 4 0 1 0
TEAM 0-3 3 2
Totals 200 21-51 5-24 4-6 4-24 28 13 9 22 2 6 51
Percentages 41.2 20.8 66.7
RAINBOW WAHINE (21-8, 15-4 Big West)
NO. PLAYER MIN FG-A 3PT FT-A O-DREB TREB A PF TO BLK STL PTS
01 Imai 25 4-7 1-2 3-3 1-2 3 0 1 2 0 3 12
03 Wahinekapu 19 4-7 2-2 1-2 0-1 1 3 1 2 0 1 11
12 Perez 22 4-8 0-4 2-2 2-3 5 2 1 1 0 2 10
24 Tamilo 20 3-5 0-0 0-0 0-6 6 1 2 5 1 0 6
23 McBee 13 1-7 0-5 0-0 0-2 2 1 0 0 0 0 2
04 Lefotu 21 4-9 0-3 0-0 0-1 1 0 1 0 0 1 8
14 Rewers 18 3-4 2-2 0-0 1-4 5 2 1 2 0 0 8
02 ‘Uhila 19 2-4 1-1 0-0 0-4 4 0 1 1 0 2 5
22 Peacock 15 1-5 1-2 1-2 1-2 3 1 0 1 0 0 4
11 Filemu 20 0-1 0-1 0-0 0-0 0 1 4 1 0 1 0
08 Moors 7 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
13 Birdsong 1 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
TEAM 2-1 3 1
Totals 200 26-57 7-22 7-9 7-26 33 12 12 16 1 10 66
Percentages 45.6 31.8 77.8
Score By Period
Cal State Bakersfield 13 5 15 18 – 51
Hawaii 10 19 23 14 – 66
Technical fouls — none. Officials — Karen Lasuik, Kaili Kimura, Akira Usami. A — 1,122
