After all the ups and downs the Hawaii women’s basketball team has endured in 2018-19, it is no small thing to be playing for second place in the final week of the regular season.
And if the Rainbow Wahine enter next week’s Big West tournament with a pair of byes afforded the No. 2 seed, they’ll surely have earned it.
That would require fourth-place UH (12-15, 8-6) to defeat the two teams just ahead of them – UC Riverside and Cal State Northridge – on the road after the Highlanders and Matadors both won in Honolulu.
UH coach Laura Beeman considered those two outings (including the 49-29 embarrassment at the hands of CSUN on Jan. 17) two of her team’s worst.
“Both these teams, I think it’s going to be the team with the least amount of mistakes that moves forward,” UH coach Laura Beeman said before boarding the team bus to the airport Tuesday. “So we’ve got our hands full, but if you want to be the No. 2 team in seeding, you have to beat everybody.
“We took care of (first-place UC) Davis (in Honolulu), now we have to split with these guys. If we do that, rightfully so. If now, we’re going to scratch and claw when we get into the tournament, do what we need to do to take care of business there.”
The Wahine are riding some confidence coming off a 70-55 win over Cal State Fullerton on senior night, their first win in three games since losing forward Makenna Woodfolk for the season.
Because of UC Irvine’s loss at CSUN Wednesday night, UH clinched a top-four seed and a first-round bye.
Riverside’s breakout star, junior Jannon Otto (15.2 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 3.5 apg), was instrumental in the Highlanders’ 60-55 win at the Stan Sheriff Center on Jan. 30.
“Riverside has always had a height advantage all the way across the board,” UH point guard Tia Kanoa said. “They’re lengthy. They play off. And for us, we’ve kind of struggled against teams that play off of us, and (in) attacking those kind of zones or a switching defense like Riverside has. So, it’s being aggressive against Riverside and making sure we dominate the boards.”
CSUN, as always, has senior center Channon Fluker (16.1 ppg, 11.2 rpg, 3.7 bpg), who was uncharacteristically quiet in the season’s first meeting but has a history of going off on Hawaii.
“Northridge will definitely be all about the boards for us,” Kanoa said. “Fluker gets a lot of her points off of O-boards, so being able to rebound and run for us is going to be really important to push transition for them. So I think those are going to be the keys for us going into next week.”
UH will remain in Southern California and go straight to the Big West tournament. The first two rounds will be held at UC Irvine, with the semifinals and finals at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. UH last won the Big West in 2016.
RAINBOW WAHINE BASKETBALL
>> Today: Hawaii (12-15, 8-6 Big West) at UC Riverside (15-13, 9-5), 5 p.m.
>> Saturday: Hawaii at Cal State Northridge (16-13, 10-5), 2 p.m.
>> TV/radio: None.
>> Video streaming: Bigwest.TV
