By getting back to its defensive principles, the Hawaii women’s basketball team picked up an important milestone under its first-year head coach.

The Rainbow Wahine forced 20 turnovers while committing only nine and earned the first road victory of Laura Beeman’s tenure with a 65-50 win at UC Riverside on Saturday. It was also the first UH women’s hoops victory in the Big West Conference since returning to the league it left in 1996.

"We just really talked about getting back to playing for each other … talking about the things that had made us good over the preseason," Beeman said. "First and foremost, our defense."

UH (5-8 overall, 1-1 BWC) shot a serviceable 40 percent and limited the Highlanders (7-6, 0-2) to 34.8 percent shooting and 17 points below the Highlanders’ average.

UH junior wing Shawna Kuehu came off the bench to put in a game- and season-high 14 points on 6-for-10 shooting with three rebounds and three steals. Junior forward Kamilah Martin added 13 points and junior wing Vicky Tagalicod 11.

The Wahine had quite the turnaround effort two days after committing 24 turnovers in an 83-74 loss at Cal State Fullerton in which the Titans pulled away in the final three minutes.

"It’s a really good momentum-changer for us as a team," Kuehu said. "We felt different in the sense that we felt more hungry for this, because we let the Cal State Fullerton game slip out of our hands."

Or as Beeman said: "Basketball’s played one possession at a time, and we need to stop looking into March. March doesn’t happen until March."

Much like the Fullerton game, UH jumped out to an early lead. But the Wahine gave up an 11-0 run crossing the halves, allowing Riverside to briefly take the lead early in the second period, 27-26.

The Wahine scored the next 11 to reassert control and were able to win comfortably down the stretch.

Beeman credited junior guard Sydney Haydel with an individual lockdown effort on the Highlanders’ best perimeter players.

"Very rarely does a team lead from beginning to end without a good team in UC Riverside coming back," Beeman said. "We expected the run. We told the girls, you know, hold your composure and go back to what worked for us, our defense."

UH returns home next week for games against UC Irvine and Long Beach State.