Long Beach State emphatically slammed the door on Hawaii’s 2016-17 season, dealing the Rainbow Warriors consecutive losses to complete the regular season and in the first round of the Big West tournament.

Undeterred, the ’Bows come knocking yet again on the metal husk of the Walter Pyramid, where they are 0-5 as a conference visitor.

Redshirt freshman point guard Drew Buggs, a Long Beach native, has been in the Pyramid for camps and played pickup games with 49ers players this summer.

Buggs’ father, Andrew, is in charge of LBSU athletics’ academic study hall and Beach forward LaRond Williams was Buggs’ teammate at Long Beach Poly High.

“We’ve got a really good feel for each other,” Buggs said. “We’ve had some battles in the past. Obviously they got the best of us last year, at the end of the season. We’ve got that in mind and we want to come back and try to get a win at Long Beach.”

Buggs, who is averaging 5.0 assists in his last five games, expects a “pretty good” turnout of friends and family, but added, “I’m trying not to make the game bigger than it is.”

UH (9-4), picked fifth in the Big West preseason media poll to fourth for LBSU (6-10), follows at Cal State North-ridge (3-11) on Saturday.

Familiarity has bred a fair amount of contempt between these conference foes. One has ended the other’s season in the past three BWC tournaments.

“A little bit,” forward Jack Purchase said of feeling the budding rivalry. “Coach (Eran Ganot) was saying how we haven’t won there for eight years or something. … It does feel a bit special going up against Long Beach. We’re going to give them our best shot.”

Co-captain Mike Thomas (11.5 ppg) was a redshirting spectator at the end of the bench for his team’s 84-75 loss at the Pyramid last March. It knocked UH’s record down to 1-9 all-time at LBSU, with the lone win coming in a BracketBusters game in 2007.

What stands out about the place?

“Their student section,” Thomas said with no hesitation. “Last year I got a pretty good taste of the student section, just because I’m sitting next to them the entire time. But they’re a pretty energized crowd. They’ve got great facilities. Their (video) board when you shoot free throws. It’s a wild environment, but it’s fun. You enjoy that as a competitor.”

UH and LBSU even had some overlapping recruiting last summer. Shooting guard Bryan Alberts (14.0 ppg, 3.2 3s per game), a Gonzaga transfer, eventually chose Long Beach after considering UH. And freshman guard Edon Maxhuni of Finland took a recruiting visit to the Manoa campus before deciding on LBSU.

The ’Bows might’ve figured something out with the two-point guard starting lineup of Buggs and Brocke Stepteau in last week’s 25-point win over Howard to conclude nonconference play.

UH defeated LBSU in overtime, 114-107, in Honolulu last January, thanks to late heroics by Noah Allen and Leland Green. It was the highest-scoring conference game in program history.

But LBSU turned to its bruising front line to win the next two, led by forward Temidayo Yussuf, a 265-pound, 6-7 behemoth. He and senior Gabe Levin were picked to the preseason all-conference team.

Levin leads The Beach in scoring (15.0) and rebounding (7.2) after missing the last BWC season with an injury. Yussuf missed some time this year and has mostly come off the bench. The two are still learning to play together.

As usual, LBSU sacrificed a winning nonconference record by playing a gauntlet of elite teams, including West Virginia, Arizona and Michigan State. However, the 49ers beat Stanford by eight at home.

Per KenPom.com, LBSU is the quickest-paced team in the Big West by a wide margin.

“Their talent’s really good, (though) they lost some guys from a year ago,” Ganot said of the departed backcourt of Justin Bibbins and Noah Blackwell. “They play the most (players) in our league, they have really good depth, length, athleticism.”

Junior college transfer Deishuan Booker has picked up where Bibbins left off dishing the ball.

LBSU’s Dan Monson told Big West media, “We don’t have to change anything, we just have to get better at a lot of things.”