Laura Beeman laughed it off. There wasn’t much else to say or do.
The Rainbow Wahine basketball coach was in high spirits near the end of a nightmarish travel day. Two separate mechanical incidents on the same flight from Honolulu pushed back UH’s scheduled mainland arrival for its first-round Women’s National Invitation Tournament game against San Diego on Thursday.
Instead of landing in the city of their game on Tuesday night, the team had to wait several hours and left on a red-eye flight bound for Los Angeles, where they are to catch a bus to San Diego this morning.
The first time, at around noon Tuesday, UH’s flight had to turn back about 45 minutes in because of an overflowing toilet, Beeman said. The second incident, some time later on the same plane, a faulty generator meant it could not get off the ground, period.
"Winning championships is as much about luck as it is about playing well sometimes," Beeman said. "The bus has to pull up at the right time and the ball has to hit the rim in the right way sometimes. Right now, if this is the worst thing that happens to us on this trip, then I’m going to be happy. We can look back on this and laugh and say we still won, we were locked in, we were focused. That’s what has to happen."
UH (17-13) and USD (21-9) of the West Coast Conference tip off at Jenny Craig Pavilion at 3 p.m. on Thursday. It is UH’s first postseason game in 10 years.
Hawaiian Airlines helped to accommodate the team with food and a room to watch film while it waited for a 10 p.m. flight out. Beeman called the help "awesome."
What’s the biggest thing UH lost out on with the delays?
"A good night’s sleep," Beeman said with a laugh. "That’s probably the big thing. We’re just not going to get the same type of rest. I’ve never been one for red eyes. It is what it is. We’re just going to make it work. Once we get to our hotel tomorrow morning, the girls are going to go to bed."
