The Rainbow Wahine basketball team lived by the 3 the first time it encountered Cal State Fullerton in 2019-20.

In Saturday’s rematch, Hawaii died by it.

The women misfired repeatedly from long range and experienced an untimely late scoring drought in a 70-64 loss at Titan Gym. Their fortunes have flipped from last weekend, when they hosted UC Davis with a chance to move into first place in the Big West. Now, they have lost three straight in coming up empty on their final regular-season road trip.

UH (14-13, 8-6 BWC) fell into a second-place tie with Fullerton (16-11, 8-6) with two games to play before the Big West tournament. The Titans, who own a road win at regular-season champ Davis, now have the tiebreaker with UH for tournament seeding and a coveted double-bye straight into the semifinals.

“We need to execute better on both sides of the ball,” coach Laura Beeman messaged the Star-Advertiser after the loss. “We had too many blown assignments and too many missed chippies.”

The Wahine sank a program-record 18 3-point shots in a 79-72 win over CSF at the Stan Sheriff Center on Jan. 18, but struggled to find the range at Titan Gym, going 8-for-29 (27.6%). Three of the makes came in the final minute with UH down double digits and in desperation mode.

Senior guard Julissa Tago followed up her 34-point effort in a one-point loss at UC Irvine on Thursday with a 26-point outing Saturday, her eighth 20-point game of the season. The senior from Medford, Ore., is 24 points away from becoming UH’s 22nd member of the 1,000-point club.

Her 60 points on the two-game trip weren’t enough for a victory.

“Proud of Julissa for continuing her great run,” Beeman messaged. “She is keeping us in games. We have to do better for her.”

The Big West’s leading scorer, guard Raina Perez (20.9 points per game), was held to two points through three quarters and finished with 13 on 3-for-15 shooting. But Taylor Turney (23 points) and Amiee Book (22 points, 7-for-9 shooting) picked up the slack for Jeff Harada’s Titans.

UH took a brief one-point lead on a pair of Courtney Middap free throws to begin the second half, then the Titans went on an 11-0 run to take a 44-34 lead.

The Wahine responded with a 10-0 run to tie it at 44 heading to the fourth quarter.

Tago hit a long 2-pointer to begin the final period and the teams swapped the lead a few times until the Titans eked ahead by double digits once more, 62-52.

The Wahine remained stuck on 52 for nearly five minutes of crunch time until Amy Atwell hit a 3 with 38 seconds left.

UH opens senior week against UC Santa Barbara (12-15, 7-7) on Wednesday.