On a make-or-break water polo weekend, Hawaii was stellar. Its defense was somewhere far beyond.

The seventh-ranked Rainbow Wahine played shutdown defense at last week’s Big West Championship, earning their first conference title and first NCAA Championship appearance since 2009.

They were seeded fourth in Monday’s NCAA Selection Show and face No. 5 UC San Diego in the opening round, May 10 at Harvard.

Hawaii’s thrashing, slashing defense suffocated three straight Top 20 teams. The tournament’s top-seeded team held No. 20 Pacific to two goals — a season best — in the opener. Tenth-ranked Long Beach State and sixth-ranked UC Irvine managed four apiece, in eight quarters and two exhausting overtime periods.

The Wahine beat UCI 5-4 in the final, tournament MVP Monika Eggens scoring with 44 seconds left in the second OT. The Anteaters won the first four BWC championships.

"Everyone was everywhere," UH coach Maureen Cole said. "We played great position defense. Everyone was crashing and moving and we were pressing a lot more. No one could get any shots off. It was awesome.

"The energy level of this team … it was playing together as a team for the first time. We peaked at the right time. That’s the best we’ve played all year as a team. We’ve had good individual moments throughout the year, but this time just everyone was playing well together, so it was special."

An entire season came down to last weekend, just as Hawaii knew it would the moment it joined the Big West. The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, its previous conference, is the premier collection of college teams in the country. MPSF champ USC will be in Boston, along with at-large selections Stanford and UCLA. No other conference dares hope for an at-large.

The MPSF holds the top three seeds in the eight-team national tournament. Hawaii is next, with elite international scorers in seniors Eggens and Amarens Genee, and that devastating defense.

"It’s been trial and error all season," said UH sophomore Emily Carr, who scored the only goal Eggens did not claim Saturday. "It came together the last week of the season, so it’s been really nice.

"This feels amazing, really good to get recognition from everyone. All the girls are happy for each other, and especially for the seniors, It’s such a good feeling."

Eggens, who took last year off to try to help Canada reach the Olympics, became the program’s most prolific scorer on the trip and now has 245 goals in her All-America career.

UH (21-9) takes a season-high eight-match winning streak to its eighth national tournament. It played UC San Diego a month ago in a non-conference match, winning 9-6. The 13th-ranked Tritons (25-13) won the Western Water Polo Association on Sunday.

This will be different from that day in Manoa and Sunday in Irvine and any other time in the history of Hawaii’s program. For the first time, the Wahine are champions.

"It’s special, this group of girls, it was such a team effort," Cole said. "It feels so great to do it. Like I told them after the game, it’s not easy to win a championship. No matter what conference it is, to win in that moment, not any team can do that. It’s special and a breakthrough. It was our first time in the Big West and it was against a great Irvine team that definitely knows how to win because it won the last four. So it was awesome."

Even the worldly, soft-spoken Eggens was impressed.

"It was exciting, we are all proud," she said. "Our goal this season was to get to NCAAs. Now we have something to prove at NCAAs."