Three days after returning from Los Angeles, Hawaii headed right back to SoCal on Wednesday.
Not that the Rainbow Wahine basketball team minds the quick turnaround in the slightest.
The Wahine squeezed in a 6 a.m. practice at the Stan Sheriff Center Wednesday before boarding their charter flight bound for Los Angeles, where they’ll meet UCLA in an NCAA tournament first-round game on Saturday at storied Pauley Pavilion.
Although brief, the trip home following the Big West tournament gave the Wahine a chance to get back into a routine coming off a jubilant weekend.
After winning the conference title, they returned to Honolulu on Sunday, learned of their first-round destination on Monday and got back on the court for two practices before departing again.
“(Tuesday) we could feel that they’d had two days off. … I thought at the end of practice today we started to feel like ourselves again,” UH coach Laura Beeman said after Wednesday’s practice.
“Practices in California are going to be fun. I can already feel the intensity and the shift happening. They just needed to grind out the two days off and a little bit of the nervousness, a little bit of the, ‘oh my gosh, we’re going to the NCAA.’ We’re ready. We’re ready to play.”
The Wahine (21-10), the 14th seed in the Bridgeport Region, have a workout scheduled today on the UCLA campus and will get their first look inside Pauley Pavilion on Friday in a 90-minute practice session before facing the third-seeded Bruins (24-8).
Saturday’s game is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN2. The winner advances to face No. 6 South Florida or No. 11 Colorado State in the second round on Monday.
“We’re still excited over the big win on Saturday (in the Big West final), but practices have been really competitive and intense and you can tell that we’re really on a mission not to be one and done, but to keep going forward,” senior guard Marissa Wimbley said after her final practice in the Sheriff Center.
Before hustling off to catch their flight, Beeman implored the Wahine to slow down just a bit.
UCLA enters the tournament ranked 10th in the Associated Press poll and will be the fourth nationally ranked team the Wahine will face this season. Based on the scouting report, Beeman expects the Bruins to try to force the Wahine into mistakes by speeding up the tempo on defense.
UH will try to counter by following the advice of legendary UCLA coach John Wooden — “be quick, but don’t hurry.”
“That’s just what they do to everybody and they’re athletic enough to do it,” Beeman said. “So we’re just trying to work on our composure and I thought they did a really nice job today of just calming it down.”
Part of maintaining poise under pressure comes with “the confidence knowing we’re one of the best 64 in the country,” Beeman said.
“We’ve talked off and on about it that this is the Big Dance, this is where you want to be and you’re one of the remaining teams. Don’t just sit back and enjoy it, play like it.
“It’s fun, but we’re not satisfied. We can have the, ‘we’re in it, we’re so happy, this is so awesome, we’ve met our goal.’ But we’re not done. That has to be the last thought or the last sentence that comes out of your mouth … ‘we’re not done.’ ”
