Dan Monson knows a thing or two about winning the Big West Conference.

Based on the first five games of league play, the coach of three-time defending regular-season champion Long Beach State sees a potential title team somewhere else this time around.

"I think, if I could trade anybody what they’ve done so far it would be Hawaii," Monson said, "because they’ve had four games on the road, they’re one game back (from first), they’ve beaten the leader (UC Irvine) at their place and they haven’t lost a home game. To me, that’s at least a game up on everybody after five, six games. Not having lost a game at home is paramount."

UH can take Monson’s word for it. The Beach went all three of its championship seasons — 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 — without losing a conference home game. That streak came to an end to open this season in a 46-44 slugfest won by Irvine, signaling a possible changing of the guard in the league. UH, in turn, disrupted things further with its 90-86 comeback win in overtime at UCI last Saturday.

The Rainbow Warriors (14-5, 3-2 Big West) are confident coming off their 2-0 road trip to UC Davis and Irvine last week, moving them to 3-3 on the mainland this season. They’ve put up 93.3 points per game over their three-game winning streak.

"Why not us?" shooting guard Garrett Nevels said of UH taking over Long Beach’s championship mantle. "You know, we’re in the Big West. We work hard every day. Why not us?"

Keeping its conference home record unblemished over the next two weeks would go a long way. The first of four straight home games is tonight against Long Beach State, which enters the contest with the same conference record — 3-2, a poor league start by the 49ers’ high standards.

"I think it’s important that we continue to play our game and our tempo," UH coach Gib Arnold said. "Obviously, we’re thrilled to be home, but we understand that we did what we needed to do on the road. But now you gotta win at home. You gotta hold your home court. So these become huge games for us. That we defend home and we play our best basketball of the year right now."

As always under Monson, Long Beach loaded up with one of the toughest nonconference schedules in the country. That contributed to a 1-9 season start, as did the dismissal of three core players from last year’s team — Keala King, Tony Freeland and Deng Deng — in the offseason. The athletic James Ennis and sharpshooter Peter Pappageorge are gone, too, to graduation.

But all-league point guard Mike Caffey (16.5 ppg, 4.5 apg) remains. And Monson reloaded somewhat with UCLA transfer Tyler Lamb (16.1 ppg) and guard Travis Hammonds, both of whom became eligible to play in December. As Lamb has gone, so has The Beach; he’s shot great in LBSU’s wins and terrible in the losses.

Fifth-year senior forward Dan Jennings (10.2 ppg, 7.7 rpg) is the team’s third double-figure scorer and top rebounder.

UH has relied increasingly on its starting lineup of Keith Shamburger, Nevels, Brandon Spearman, Christian Standhardinger and Isaac Fotu. That went to a new extreme in its successful road trip, as the first five scored 177 of the 180 points in the two games.

"I felt that the last couple games, especially the Irvine game, I liked the rhythm our starting five had, so I kept with ’em," Arnold said. "They didn’t seem tired and they continued to play hard. Now, that doesn’t mean Thursday that we’re going to do that at all. We could have 30 points from off the bench, and those guys could play a lot more minutes. It’s game-to-game for me. I have total faith in my bench, and when called upon those guys have done a great job."

Fotu, who is 21-for-21 at the free-throw line in Big West play, missed Wednesday’s practice "to rest," Arnold said, but would be fine to play today. Fotu is sixth nationally in field-goal percentage (.616). With a make in his last nonconference free throw, he needs seven more consecutive free throw conversions to tie Zane Johnson’s record 29 set in 2011.

Last year, UH routed LBSU 94-73 at the Sheriff in perhaps the best all-around Big West win for the ‘Bows until last week at Irvine.

"Well, we don’t throw that out at all," Monson said of the rout. "That was the first thing we showed our players, was that 53-20 halftime score from last year. That, to me, is just one team’s ready to play and one team isn’t. … And I’m not taking anything away from them, but we let them get going and we let them go from good to great. We’ve got to do a better job of coming over here and competing, and that’s my biggest thing (today). If we expect to contend — I know Hawaii’s going to contend for the title this year — if we expect to, we’ve got to compete with them (today)."

Note

With this week’s return of former video coordinator Jamie Smith to the islands came the return of themed nights for students at the remaining UH home games. Today’s theme is "Rainbow Warrior Paint Night." Attending students and fans are encouraged to arrive with painted faces.