If there was a team that deserved to put up its sneakers, kick back and relax a little during this holiday season, it was the University of Hawaii women’s basketball team.

The Rainbow Wahine definitely earned something of a breather by playing what, according to the NCAA, was the eighth toughest schedule among 349 Division I teams, through Dec. 29, the last date rankings were posted.

That put them just behind Duke, UCLA and Stanford, among others, and ahead of Tennessee, Connecticut, Wisconsin, etc.

Wherever head coach Laura Beeman found the opponents to stock this schedule — and presumably the Los Angeles Sparks and Chicago Sky weren’t available — it wasn’t through pick-a-patsy.com or in the pastry section.   

Throw in the travel across three states that came with playing half of their 12 non-conference games on the road and a 6-6 record that might at first glance have been considered ho-hum becomes something of a badge of honor.

Consider, for example, that UH has played a third of the Pac-12 membership. Or that just two of UH’s 12 overall opponents to date have losing records. Five, including 24th-ranked Arizona State (11-1), have double-digit victories. UH beat two of them, Minnesota (11-3) and Chattanooga

(10-3), and denied Mississippi (9-5).

 UH opponents to date have won nearly 70 percent of their games, going 85-38.

 And this schedule, Beeman will tell you, came about in part because the previous season’s slate — three consecutive tournaments heading into the opening of Big West Conference play — was, get this, considered too much of a grind.

 "Too difficult to get better and too difficult to prepare for our conference," Beeman said.

 Dropping a Christmas tournament to play the gauntlet of single games meant the Rainbow Wahine haven’t played since Dec. 23 and haven’t appeared in a game on the Stan Sheriff Center court since Dec. 1. If you are counting, it will be 38 days between UH’s last home game and the next one, Jan. 8, when the Rainbow Wahine tip off against Cal Poly in the conference opener.

"We’ve had a couple of really good practices," Beeman said. "Now," she vows, "we’re going to get the rust off" today with a closed-door scrimmage against Hawaii Pacific.

The idea behind the challenging schedule, some of which was inherited from her predecessor, Dana Takahara-Dias, is several-fold. Foremost being that the Rainbow Wahine want to be ready for the start of the Big West, where they tied for second place last season at 13-5 (17-14 overall), and position themselves for the postseason.

That takes on added importance this year, with the way the conference schedule sets up favorably for the Rainbow Wahine, who have four of the first five games at home.

With that in mind, R & R, such as it was, is officially over for the Rainbow Wahine.

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.