Hawaii messed with Texas for about 8 minutes.

The Lone Star State’s flagship school answered an early UH lead by standing tall in a 71-50 defeat of the Rainbow Wahine on Sunday.

No. 24 Texas (5-1) of the Big 12 brought seemingly 12 bigs to bear against UH (1-6) in seizing the Waikiki Beach Marriott Rainbow Wahine Showdown title.

A sustained assault by the Texas frontcourt did most of the damage as UH went 0-for-3 in a tournament it hosted at the Stan Sheriff Center for the second straight weekend.

The Wahine remained winless against Division I teams this season. Three have been ranked and another two received votes in the Top 25 poll. Now UH heads to the East Coast today for the longest road trip in program history.

The learning curve has been steep this season, perhaps never more so than against Texas’ behemoths.

Though the Wahine battled hard for rebounds and were out-boarded only by six, Texas simply kept lobbing the ball over the UH defense for a 42-20 advantage on points in the paint and 48.4 percent shooting from the floor.

"We are across the board tinier than the Texas team," UH coach Dana Takahara-Dias said. "We tried very hard to defend, but it’s very difficult to defend 6-5, 6-4, 6-3. We did the best that we could."

A career-high scoring night by senior forward Breanna Arbuckle (22 points) wasn’t enough to offset that. The 6-foot Arbuckle shot 8-for-12, but the UH perimeter game struggled mightily.

The rest of the team shot 9-for-39 (23.1 percent). Compounding matters, UH’s tallest player, 6-foot-4 Rebecca Dew, fouled out in 12 minutes of play.

UH jumped out to a 10-4 lead behind strong early play by Arbuckle and sophomore forward Kamilah Jackson, who was UH’s lone entry on the all-tournament team. The pair went right at Texas’ 6-foot-4 twin towers, Ashley Gayle and Cokie Reed.

"Coach Dana gave us a speech in the locker room and said, ‘Just go out there and play hard and give it your all.’ That’s what we did," Arbuckle said.

But poor outside shooting (3-for-17 on 3-pointers) and a 28-12 disparity in points off of turnovers — forced by a flexible and athletic Texas defensive scheme — meant UH couldn’t sustain the hot start. Texas caught and passed UH by the midpoint of the first half, and its reserves allowed no slippage in outscoring the Wahine bench 21-2.

Texas sophomore guard Chassidy Fussell, the tournament MVP, put in 15 with four assists, and point guard Yvonne Anderson added 13 for the Longhorns.

UH cut it to 51-38 midway through the second half, only to have the Longhorns bury the game with a 16-3 run.

Backup point guard Jasmine Ray was suspended through the tournament for a violation of team rules, meaning starting point Alissa Campanero had to play all 40 minutes. The true freshman shot 2-for-11 from long range.

When asked about Ray’s possible return, Takahara-Dias said, "That’s up to her."

NO. 24 TEXAS 71, HAWAII 50