USC women’s basketball associate head coach Laura Beeman is expected to be announced today as Hawaii’s head coach, a source confirmed to the Star-Advertiser on Thursday night.

Beeman succeeds Dana Takahara-Dias, who was not retained on March 7 after a first-round loss in the Western Athletic Conference tournament and an 11-19 record in her third year.

A press conference is expected this afternoon at the Manoa lower campus to announce Beeman as the eighth coach in program history. She beat out current UH associate head coach Gavin Petersen and at least one other finalist for the job.

Beeman assisted with the Trojans for the past two years under former NBA player Michael Cooper. USC went 18-12 this season, including a 12-6 mark in Pac-12 Conference play, narrowly missing out on the NCAA tournament.

With her hire, both UH basketball head coaches will have come from USC. Men’s coach Gib Arnold spent five years as an assistant there before coming to UH in March 2010.

Prior to USC, Beeman was head coach at Mt. San Antonio College in Southern California for 15 years, going 390-110. She also assisted Cooper with the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA in 2008.

She was named conference coach of the year four times while at Mt. SAC. Her teams won three straight California Community College State Championships from 2006 to ’08, highlighted by matching 37-1 records in ’07 and ’08, and also claimed 10 conference titles.

Beeman is a former Cal State San Bernardino player. She received dual master’s degrees in education at the University of Redlands and Azusa Pacific University.