Sometimes, when the Rainbow Wahine basketball team is on a roll, the band plays and the crowd is wound up, Vince Goo and Nani Cockett will trade a look for which no words are necessary.
It is the “remember-the-good-old-days” glance for two who lived it.
Days, for example, when the University of Hawaii almost routinely was a 20-game winner with Goo as its coach and Cockett a star player, and UH made its last NCAAs (1997-98).
Those moments, largely absent for more than a decade, have been increasingly reawakened by the 21-7 (13-2 conference) Rainbow Wahine team that celebrates its regular-season finale Saturday at 5 p.m. at the Stan Sheriff Center against Cal State Fullerton.
As commentators for Oceanic Cable, Goo and Cockett have had courtside seats to the Rainbow Wahine’s remarkable resurgence.
It has produced the first 20-win season in 13 years, first conference championship in 17 seasons — and a lot more.
While it remains to be seen just how far this team will go in the postseason and whether there will be a return to the NCAA tournament, part of its legacy will be having reconnected with a proud past and brought back fans.
That’s no small accomplishment considering the drought that had seen more 20-loss seasons (two) than 20-victory campaigns (none) over the previous 12 years. Along the way there had been three coaching changes, no shortage of controversy and a thinning of the crowds.
That amounted to a major fall for a program that had been among the most consistent and successful on campus, producing 13 20-win seasons in an 18-year span.
Goo, UH’s winningest basketball coach, went 334-166 in a 17-year (1987-2004) tenure that included five NCAA tournament appearances. And he has relished the revival of fortunes under coach Laura Beeman, particularly how this team has thrived with a blend of players inherited from previous coaching staffs and new players.
Goo said he knew little about Beeman when she took over the program three years ago, only that she had been a winner (390-110 and four California state titles) in 15 years as a head coach at Mount San Antonio Community College before coaching in the WNBA and at USC.
“When you win as much as she did, whether it is high school, junior college or elsewhere, you’re doing something right,” Goo said.
Or, in the case of consecutive 17-14 seasons and Women’s National Invitation Tournament appearances in the first two years at UH, a lot.
UH is assured of arriving as the No. 1 seed in the Big West tournament that opens Tuesday in Anaheim, Calif.
That they could be accompanied by a 14-game winning streak recalls the exploits of some of the honored teams of the past, such as the “Divine Nine,” the short-handed team that set the school record of 19 in a row in 1992-93.
Yet another reminder that the program is back in good hands.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
