You can officially call them winners again.

The Hawaii Rainbow Wahine clinched their first winning season in six years with a 67-57 defeat of UC Riverside on Thursday night at the Stan Sheriff Center.

Upon learning that fact, first-year UH coach Laura Beeman fist-bumped junior wing Vicky Tagalicod in the postgame press conference.

"Being a part of a program that’s winning is always fun. It’s always fun coming into practice knowing that it’s not going to be easy, it’s going to be intense," said Tagalicod, who came off the bench to score a season-high 18 points on 8-for-11 shooting. "Everybody’s going to work hard and everybody knows what’s at stake."

Third-place UH (16-12, 12-5 Big West) has larger goals than merely finishing above .500 for the first time since the 15-14 season of 2006-07. The Wahine still can finish tied for first or second with a win on Saturday’s senior night against Cal State Fullerton, coupled with losses by Cal Poly and Pacific.

Kamilah Martin had her 13th double-double of the season with 21 points and 13 rebounds. Shawna Kuehu added 10 points, seven rebounds and two blocks in front of the crowd of 799.

This victory, like most the Wahine have eked out in their new conference home, took a little doing against the last-place Highlanders, who were fighting for their Big West tournament lives but fell short for the seventh straight game.

Riverside (11-17, 4-13) came back from a nine-point halftime deficit to tie it at 39.

Then UH, with a big boost from its bench, went on a 16-3 run to pull away for good.

UH rode its bench (a 33-8 scoring advantage by its reserves) and rebounding (plus-nine) to win for the fifth time in six games and improve to 7-1 at home in BWC play.

"Thirty-three points from your bench is always a great night," Beeman said. "That’s half of your productivity. Both Vicky and Shawna like coming off the bench, and I won’t change that until they say, ‘Coach, change it.’ … Any time you have two kids on your bench who could be starters sitting on your bench and they come in, that’s something great to have in your back pocket."

Beeman was not satisfied with the win. The Wahine shot 51.6 percent in the first half in taking a 37-28 lead at the break, but their shooting dipped to 30.8 percent in the second period.

"I still want us to play 40 minutes of basketball. I still want us to put two halves together," she said. "We can’t do that.

"The good thing is we’re still grinding it out and winning. But games like this give you an early exit in the Big West tournament, because teams are good. … I’m hoping that over the past three or four games we’re learning we have to close out games better than what we did tonight."

UCR was led by guard Brittany Crain, who scored 23 points on 10-for-17 shooting.

Center Stephanie Ricketts got her third start of the season and had career highs of six rebounds, three assists and two steals.

UH guard Kanisha Bello, one of four outgoing players to be honored Saturday, played four second-half minutes. It was her first appearance since Dec. 28 against LIU-Brooklyn.