The Hawaii soccer team mostly played a conservative formation in its first tournament, which featured national contenders in No. 3 Stanford and No. 18 California.

UH’s next event, the Outrigger Resorts No Ka Oi, is up next starting Thursday, and coach Michele Nagamine figures it’s time to let the horses run against the Wyoming Cowgirls. UH (0-2) follows against Denver on Monday.

"I hope we can just put together a very prolific offensive performance, because we’ve got some weapons. And we need to start using them," she said.

The Rainbow Wahine will likely revert to their more traditional 4-3-3 alignment against the Cowgirls, instead of the defensive 4-5-1 shift used against the potent Cardinal and Golden Bears.

UH held tough with a 1-0 lead for 70 minutes against the Cardinal, only to fall 2-1. They followed with a 5-1 shellacking at the hands of Cal, which Nagamine blamed on a lack of mental toughness coming off such a strong performance.

Forward Sonest Furtado and midfielder Lauren Takai have found the net so far for the Wahine. But the team has legitimate scoring threats in Tiana Fujimoto, Kama Pascua, T.J. Reyno and others. They’ve so far been held in check; UH was outshot 44-8 against the two top-20 teams.

Fujimoto, who missed last season due to injury, said she felt "into the groove" within the first five minutes against Stanford.

Now, the co-captain figures, "We need to play a lot smarter, we need to watch our movement off the ball and we need to be better at man-marking."

Looking for a win

All three teams in the tourney are looking for their first win of the season. Wyoming (0-0-1) of the Mountain West drew against Montana, and Denver (0-2) of the Summit League was shut out in losses to Air Force and Colorado State.

A couple of UH freshmen will look to build on positive first outings. Six-foot forward Kellsie Gleason got plenty of attention, and defender Sarah Lau logged heavy minutes in the back. Nagamine came away mostly impressed with Lau’s ability to handle the brighter spotlight.

"I just wanted to prove to my coach that she made the right decision by starting me," Lau said. "I wanted to make my teammates sure that they can … trust me and (show) that I’ll always work hard and do the job."

As an outer back, Lau will have opportunities to advance the ball and create chances for teammates.

"I’m supposed to be making attacking runs on the flanks and take my defense seriously, and make sure I’m connecting with the back and then just getting up more so we can get more attacking runs up into the offensive third," she said.

The No Ka Oi tournament format is a little unusual; because a third visiting team couldn’t be found, UH, Wyoming and Denver will each play each other spanning Thursday to Monday to avoid any back-to-back days of games.

"It’s one of those things that it kind of is what it is," said Nagamine, who cited budgetary limitations. "Although, it sucks to play on a Thursday-Monday because it makes it difficult for the fans. They know we’re going to have a very entertaining weekend and they’ll get a chance to see some good soccer again. We hope that they do make the effort to come out, even though it is a school night."

Weather a concern

With Oahu hard-hit by rain in recent days, the condition of the Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium field could be a concern. A match between Stanford and BYU this Monday already was canceled.

"We’ll just have to wait and see what happens," Nagamine said of Thursday’s match. "We’re going to be ready to go, but Plan B would not be to switch the venue. We would have to reschedule. We don’t have any viable options for what other field we would play on."

Halushka out

Sophomore forward Kiani Halushka will miss the entire 2015 season for "personal reasons," Nagamine said.

Halushka, a Kamehameha product who appeared in 14 matches as a reserve last season, is expected back for 2016 spring training.