Almost precisely one year ago, Hawaii walked into UC Davis’ Pavilion as a heavy favorite and emerged with a two-point victory as well as a share of its first Big West regular-season championship.

This time, it’s the Rainbow Warriors (14-13, 8-6 Big West), winners of six of eight, who hope to make it tough for the championship-contending Aggies (18-11, 10-4), who are unbeaten on their Northern California court.

For UH, it’s the exact same road swing — facing Davis and Long Beach State on their senior nights in the final week of the regular season — at the front end of a three-week voyage through the Big West tournament in Anaheim, Calif., and to Spokane, Wash., for the NCAAs last March.

“It’s just like last year. By the end of it it’ll be three senior nights in a row again (including UH’s own),” mused coach Eran Ganot prior to the team’s departure this week. “Davis hasn’t lost at home (10-0 overall, 7-0 BWC) and is No. 1 in the league. … We’ve got a tough task, a great task.”

The difference in 2017: UH still does not know if it can participate in next week’s Big West tournament by the grace of the NCAA. In the meantime, the third-place ’Bows are focused on improving their theoretical seeding. They can finish as high as second place or as low as sixth.

Davis entered Wednesday tied for the lead with UC Irvine — the Aggies’ opponent Saturday — with two games to play. The Aggies are determined not to overlook the ’Bows, whom they beat 76-70 in Honolulu on Jan. 21 after matching UH shot for shot down the stretch.

“Even before the league season, I kind of felt like we had the type of team that should be, in late February and early March, competing for a league title,” Davis coach Jim Les said in a phone interview Wednesday. “And if we weren’t in that position, we were going to be disappointed in the year we had. So, we’ve played ourselves into that position.”

The Aggies start four of their five seniors. The other starter is junior forward Chima Moneke (15.0 ppg, 9.1 rpg, 11 double-doubles), a strong contender for Big West player of the year.

UH has its own candidate in wing Noah Allen, the league’s leading scorer in conference games at 18.7. Allen scored 26 in the first meeting to Moneke’s 26 and 13 rebounds.

“I’m looking forward to it,” UH forward Jack Purchase said of the rematch. “They’re a good team and it’s actually a pretty tough matchup for me, because their 4-man (Moneke) is one of the better players in the conference. Looking forward to having to guard him and see if I can keep up with him and play at his level.”

The sports goggles-sporting Moneke is coming off an 18-point, 17-rebound double-double in a 75-71 overtime home win over Long Beach State. He leads the Big West in eight statistical categories.

Ganot said Davis deserves two first-team all-conference players in Moneke and guard Brynton Lemar (15.8 ppg, 17.6 in Big West). He called Moneke “the dominant post player in our conference. He really hurt us. Lemar is right behind Noah in conference scoring and is averaging about 24 a game the last three games.”

On Feb. 23 Lemar became the 22nd Aggie to score 1,000 career points.

“He’s a really good player who does it the old-fashioned way,” Les said. “Works really hard, first one in practice, last one to leave. Really has a great competitive fire to him, and loves big games, loves the big shot. Loves the big play. We’ve been riding his hot hand here lately.”

Les said he did not consider today’s game a do-over for last year’s senior night game at Davis, which saw UH emerge from the visitors locker room wearing “Big West champions” T-shirts.

“Every game every year is an entity into itself,” Les said. “Saturday’s game could be really important; it could be for the league championship. But we know we can’t think about or worry about Saturday unless we take care of business (tonight).”

In the March 3, 2016 meeting, UH won 67-65 despite yielding the game’s first 11 points and trailing by 11 at halftime. UCD’s Darius Graham, now their senior point guard, had a pull-up 3 go in and out at the buzzer.