No defending national champion, no rim-rattling All-Americans. No final four teams to be seen, in fact.
Just balance, a little give and a little take on a steady schedule Hawaii basketball coach Laura Beeman hopes will propel her team to another season of improvement. After an Oct. 30 exhibition against Hawaii Hilo, the Rainbow Wahine officially open at Arizona State on Nov. 9 in one of four games against Pac-12 competition. That includes one against Beeman’s former team, USC, on Dec. 21.
The official home opener is Nov. 15 against Washington State in the Bank of Hawaii Rainbow Wahine Classic.
"There are teams we are not supposed to beat, I think there are teams we’re going to compete head-to-head with, and hopefully there are a few games before we get into conference that we can win," Beeman said.
The Wahine went 17-14 in Beeman’s Division I head coaching debut season of 2012-13, with a trip to the WNIT — the program’s first postseason appearance in a decade.
That was even after a 2-6 start, including blowout losses to defending national champion Baylor and star Brittney Griner, as well as 2012 final four participant Stanford and a slew of other elite teams.
Beeman and her staff inherited that schedule. But she had complete command of this one, and she commended associate coach Mary Wooley for keeping it balanced, with no significant gaps in the action, unlike the nearly monthlong dearth of official games last December.
Even without such elite teams as Baylor, it will be no cakewalk. UH has 15 home dates — the fewest at the Sheriff since 13 in 2009-10 — and takes on seven opponents with postseason experience from 2012-13.
Beeman said she sought out Pac-12 opponents because of her knowledge of the league, having assisted at USC along with Wooley for two seasons under Michael Cooper. Cooper is gone, but she acknowledged the game at the Galen Center will have a little extra riding on it.
"There are some of the same players there that I had the opportunity to coach. So it’s always fun when you get to go back to a place that you’ve coached and watch the girls and how they’ve progressed," Beeman said. "I guarantee those kids are going to say, ‘No way is Coach Beeman and the University of Hawaii going to beat us on our floor.’ So they’re going to come in with a little extra motivation."
Top performers from last season are NCAA at-large team West Virginia (Nov. 17) and UT-Chattanooga (Nov. 30), the 29-win champion of the Southern Conference.
UH will take a nonconference trip to recently departed Big West member Pacific, which edged out the Wahine for the 2013 BWC regular-season title before joining the West Coast Conference.
