Wahine dig deep to pull out a victory

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And for Hawaii, ugly was a thing of beauty when the Rainbow Wahine won their fourth straight on Friday night.

The Rainbow Wahine overcame struggles on both ends of the Stan Sheriff Center court to grind out a 70-63 victory over Marist in their own Showdown. Senior guard Sarah Toeaina scored 14 points and sophomore guard Julissa Tago added 13 for Hawaii (4-1).

The Wahine will face Purdue (3-2) today at 5:30 p.m. The Boilermakers lost to unbeaten USC in Friday’s opener 58-46. The Women of Troy, who outscored Purdue 21-10 in the third quarter, take on Marist (1-3) today at 2 p.m.

“We continue to dodge bullets, but we can’t play like we did tonight and expect to beat Purdue,” Hawaii coach Laura Beeman said. “Purdue is very athletic, has size and is very athletic.

“I’ve always said an ugly win is better than a pretty loss and I hope we got the ugly out tonight.”

The Wahine came up big when needed, getting the defensive stops at the right time. It came later than they wanted — in the final five minutes of the game — and “we know we can do it for 40 minutes,” said Tago, helping ice the game by hitting all four of her free-throw attempts in the last 36.6 seconds. “At the end, we needed to make the stops.”

Hawaii did, with one of its biggest made by Toeaina with a defensive rebound with 1:44 left and the Wahine holding onto a 60-57 lead. Hawaii worked the clock down, working for an open shot, and junior guard Leah Salanoa came through with her only basket of the game, a 3-pointer with two seconds on the shot clock that capped the 12-0 deciding run.

“Basketball is a game of runs,” Beeman said. “You want to make the big plays at the end, and I thought we played with emotion without being emotional.

“We want to play with consistency and we were a little stagnant tonight. But we are sharing the ball well and Tia (junior point guard Kanoa) was exceptional.”

Kanoa had eight of Hawaii’s 16 assists with just one turnover.

Coming up big as well for the Wahine was sophomore forward Makenna Woodfolk, who finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds. She played the final 7:30 with four fouls.

Sophomore forward Alana Gilmer led Marist with 22 points, 16 coming in the first half. Sophomore guard Rebekah Hand added 15 points.

Hawaii, which went 6-for-9 from the line in Sunday’s overtime win over San Diego, was 20-for-25 Friday. Marist finished 14-for-15.

The Red Foxes led 57-51 with 5:52 left on Hand’s reverse layup but failed to score for more than four minutes while the Wahine took control.

“We had three trips down that were empty, where we either took a bad shot or had a bad turnover,” Marist coach Brian Giorgis said. “We didn’t execute what we were trying to do.

“We played a very good 35 minutes. We didn’t execute in the last five minutes of the game and they did. They dug down on their home court and wanted it more than we did.”

Hawaii spotted Marist an 8-0 lead in the opening 2:37, then used a 5-0 run to pull ahead at 16-12. The Wahine, who were a total of 2-for-3 from the line in regulation on Sunday against San Diego, were 3-for-4 in the first 10 minutes against the Red Foxes.

The second quarter featured four lead changes, the last at 2:16 on Lahni Salanoa’s jumper that put Hawaii up 27-26. Marist stayed close, using Gilmer’s third 3-pointer to cut the Wahine’s margin to 31-29 at halftime.

Gilmer, who scored 16 of the Red Foxes’ first 29 points, cooled off in the third — just four points — but Marist used solid free-throw shooting (6-for-7) and a breakaway basket by Allie Clement as time ran out in the third for a 47-46 lead.

The Red Foxes extended it to 57-51 with 5:52 remaining on Hand’s reverse layup. The Wahine answered in a big way, scoring 12 straight, capped by Leah Salanoa’s 3-pointer from the right of the key with two seconds on the shot clock

It was 63-57 with 72 seconds left. It was all but over as Hawaii thwarted Marist’s desperation attempt at sending the Wahine to the line by finishing 7-for-8 over the final 47 seconds.

USC 58, Purdue 46

Sadie Edwards scored 21 points and Kristen Simon added 16 as the Women of Troy remained unbeaten.

USC had 16 steals. Minyon Moore had six of those to go along with 13 points.

Andreona Keys led the Boilermakers with 12 points and Ae’Rianna Harris had a game-high 10 rebounds.