What happened in Fresno stays in Fresno.

At least that’s the hope for the Hawaii softball team this weekend.

Coming off a sweep that dropped them out of the national polls, the Rainbow Wahine return home looking to regain their swagger at the plate in a Western Athletic Conference series against Nevada.

The Wahine (25-12, 3-3 WAC) were held to one run over three losses in Fresno last week and will try to get back on track against Nevada (10-22, 1-5), which has been their nemesis recently.

"This will define us if we’re able to come out of Fresno, put it out of our minds and just approach it as worrying about what we need to do as a team rather than the (other) team on the field," UH coach Bob Coolen said.

The series opens with a single game today at 6 p.m., followed by a doubleheader tomorrow starting at 4 p.m.

For the first time since last April, Hawaii enters a series unranked. The Wahine have lost seven of their past 10 games. Pitchers Stephanie Ricketts and Kaia Parnaby have kept the the team in games, as evidenced by a WAC-leading 1.53 earned-run average, but the Wahine are hitting .192 while averaging 1.8 runs over that rough, 10-game stretch.

The lineup-wide struggle has the Wahine searching for the offensive rhythm that helped power them to a 12-1 start when they hit .304 with 24 home runs.

"Hopefully they start making adjustments because it’s been pretty much an issue with us all year," Coolen said. "This week we’ve tried to get into their minds a little bit; we’ve tried to give them reasons to recapture the positive elements of where they were in the beginning of the year and what they were about last year."

Leadoff hitter Kelly Majam knows a little something about breaking out of a slump. Since scuffling through eight consecutive hitless games in the nonconference season, she’s been shut out in just three of the past 14 games. She has two homers in that span, but setting the table remains her focus rather than clearing the fences.

"As a leadoff hitter my job is to get on base," said Majam, who leads UH in WAC play at .333. "Last year I was fortunate enough to hit home runs, but I think my job is to be the runner on base. I’ve done a better job of focusing on just getting those hits.

"I swing really hard, and my dad tells me all the time that when I swing it looks like I’m swinging for the fences. But really I’m just trying to hit the ball hard, and if it goes over, it goes over."

Nevada comes to town after dropping two of three at home against Louisiana Tech last week. Freshman Karley Hopkins (.365) and sophomore Erin Jones (.352) lead a Wolf Pack offense that ranks third in the WAC with a team batting average of .282. Keeping opponents off the scoreboard has been the bigger issue for Nevada, which has a 5.84 ERA.

Before UH swept last year’s series in Reno, Nevada had won 12 of 18 meetings from 2006 to ’09, including four in the WAC tournament.

But keeping their attention on their own side of the field has been an emphasis for the Wahine this week.

"I think last weekend we did focus a lot on who was in the other dugout," Majam said. "We need to get back into who our team is and what we do and not on who’s coming to our field or who’s playing against us."