Wahine hoops a contender? Who would have thunk it?

What is more remarkable, that the University of Hawaii Rainbow Wahine basketball team is still in the hunt for the Big West Conference title, or that back in December they really imagined they could be?

Here the Rainbow Wahine are at 14-12 (10-5 in conference play) and down to the final three regular-season games, one game back of leader Pacific, and if we had asked for a show of hands from those who thought that scenario was a real possibility two months ago, there surely wouldn’t have been many.

This was, after all, a team that was 4-7 coming out of nonconference play, picked to finish sixth and staring at four road appearances in its first six games in a new conference.

Hardly a situation that had “conference championship contender” written all over it.

It is a task that could have been rendered much easier had the Rainbow Wahine been able to hold on at Cal Poly on Saturday, an eventual 47-43 loss that bumped UH out of a first-place tie and into third place. But, then, the whole theme of this year’s team up to now has been about doing things the hard way.

I mean, who plays the defending national champion (Baylor) and runner-up (Stanford) in consecutive games the second week of the season? With a new coach to boot.

A coach who, after that 4-7 nonconference showing, told the team it really wasn’t outrageous to think they could contend for the top in the Big West.

“I thought we could (and) I knew we weren’t going to finish fifth or sixth,” Laura Beeman said.

One-point losses to Utah and Alabama, and an overtime victory against Cincinnati, had her thinking that UH could make a run at a lot more.

“Going into the preseason, my biggest concern was that the difficulty of the schedule (Baylor, Stanford, Oregon, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Utah, Cincinnati, Alabama, etc.) was going to be so demoralizing to this team that we weren’t going to know how to win at all,” Beeman said. “I (was worried) that when we got into the Big West we would be so lacking in confidence that any close games, we would lose. That any excuse to drop a game, we would take it.”

But the penultimate game of the nonconference season, a 65-63 overtime victory over Cincinnati on Dec. 29 — one that had seemingly slipped away, only to be recaptured — changed that.

“We talked about it (as a team) and I said, ‘Ladies, this is not that far-fetched; look at what we have done in the preseason,’ ” Beeman said. “And, I think they really felt like, ‘Hey, coach, we can win this time.’ ”

Beeman said, “I didn’t know if it was wishful thinking or they literally felt we could, but the fact that (the idea) was in their heads was exciting to me.”

Now their resilience has made it a lot more exciting for everybody, producing the most conference victories since 2001-02 while providing an opportunity to deliver UH’s first conference title since 1997-98.

And for the first time this season, the schedule actually sets up in UH’s favor. Among the top three teams in the Big West, only UH plays all its remaining games at home. UOP (11-4) has all three on the road and Cal Poly (10-4) two of four.

Now, the remarkable is within reach. 

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