ANAHEIM, CALIF. >> For the first time in months, the Hawaii basketball team came up short in hostile territory.

Prior to Saturday night’s bitter 74-72 defeat at Long Beach State to conclude the regular season, UH hadn’t lost on the Big West road, and hadn’t fallen in an opponent’s arena since Nov. 28 at Texas Tech. No previous team in program history had the chance at sweeping its conference away games; the 7-1 mark is easily the best in the books.

The Rainbow Warriors (24-5, 13-3 Big West) hope they can recapture that unprecedented run of mainland mastery this week at the Honda Center. Top-seeded UH meets Cal State Fullerton (10-19, 3-13) at 12:30 p.m. (HST) in the Big West tournament quarterfinals on Thursday.

All that really matters for the league’s eligible eight teams is the single-elimination tourney that affords a coveted ticket to the NCAA Tournament. Three wins in three days gets somebody there.

Of course, you want to be play well heading into the 18,000-seat “Pond,” home of the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks. UH went 2-2 in the last two weeks, causing the Rainbows to share the regular-season title with UC Irvine. They also lost a key rotation player in Isaac Fleming, who left the program prior to the team’s departure for the mainland.

“I always say you are who you are with what you most recently did,” UH coach Eran Ganot said after the LBSU loss, in which UH had a nine-point lead with under six minutes to play.

“To win championships, to have a chance to move on, to the second day, to the third day, you have to defend and rebound,” he said. “And that travels with you, and it has traveled with us. That’s why we were 7-0 on the road. That’s why we hung in there, because we defended for the most part of this game. We were very close to doing something very special and it didn’t happen for us. We wish it did, we wish we could have it back, but it doesn’t work like that. What does happen is you keep working. A great go-to isn’t to lay down and pout. It’s to go back to work. That’s what we’re going to do.”

UH used Sunday to unwind. Some of the team went to the Golden State Warriors-Los Angeles Lakers game at Staples Center where the Lakers produced a stunning upset.

The Rainbows will relocate from their hotel in Long Beach, Calif., today to one on Fullerton’s campus. That’s a coincidence; UH didn’t know it would be facing the Titans in the first round.

Some of the UH players resolved they would meet up with The Beach (18-13, 12-4) again in the tournament championship. Some lamented the unfriendly whistle in LBSU’s Pyramid that contributed to the late-game collapse; the 49ers shot 26 free throws in the second half to UH’s five. Some players didn’t want to talk at all.

Fourth-year junior Aaron Valdes was frustrated by the calls but was proud of the way his teammates kept their composure — UH faced a 13-point first-half deficit — and gave themselves a chance to win. UH had several shots to boost or retake the lead down the stretch.

“Just sticking together out there,” Valdes said. “We were still up, we still had the lead for the majority of the (second) half. … It comes with maturity, we matured a lot the last couple of years. Our coaches had us keeping together out there.”

Allowing 12 offensive rebounds also hurt. The Beach had 26 in its home-and-home sweep of UH, typically a solid team on the glass.

The 49ers also shot 9-for-21 on 3s (42.9 percent), an area UH has been effective at denying Big West foes — 30.4 percent allowed from deep.

Co-captain Quincy Smith managed to conjure up some perspective in his quiet way outside the Pyramid visitors’ locker room.

“We just work on ourselves, you know?” he said. “We’re a good team, we just lost by two points. We had a whole bunch of things that didn’t go our way, and it’s a two-point game. It’s a tie game with 30 seconds left. We made a stupid play (a foul on a rebound) at the end, but we just gotta look past it. We’re looking forward to Fullerton on Thursday. That’s the most important thing.”

All-conference awards are announced today. UH is expected to contend for several of the primary awards, including Big West Player of the Year, Coach of the Year and first-team selections.