The gimmes are gone.

Hawaii women’s basketball coach Laura Beeman was blunt, as is her custom, about the state of the Big West and what it will take to succeed beginning with today’s conference opener at Cal State Fullerton.

“I think our conference top to bottom is very, very good,” the sixth-year coach said prior to this week’s road departure. “In the past, you’ve had two or three teams you felt like, ‘OK, these are wins.’ We don’t have that with this conference this year. Every single team is a team that will show up to play and can beat anybody on any given night.”

UH (7-6), picked fourth in the preseason coaches and media polls, has to believe that includes itself when it takes on the likes of defending regular-season champ UC Davis (10-3) — the second game on this week’s road swing — as well as towering Cal State Northridge (7-7), stalwart Cal Poly (6-6) and hot UC Irvine (8-6).

The ones with the records below .500 — UC Santa Barbara (3-9), UC Riverside (3-11) and defending BWC tournament champion Long Beach State (2-12) — experienced success as recently as last year and are stocked enough to be dangerous.

Fullerton (5-8), in its first year under former HPU coach Jeff Harada, nearly brought a four-game winning streak into conference play but lost to UTEP in double overtime last week.

The Rainbow Wahine, sixth place last year at 7-9, endured an up-and-down nonconference schedule in their quest to become a contender for the first time since their 2016 BWC title.

They can point to their come-from-behind win at Arizona on Dec. 17 — just the second win at a Pac-12 school in program history — as a source of inspiration. In another way, the 40-point mainland losses that followed against No. 19 Texas A&M and No. 10 Oregon served a lesson. It was a magnified version of earlier swings of fortune.

“This is a team that has been in a lot of different positions this year, and are ready for whatever the road or home is going to throw at us,” Beeman said. “Because our conference is really tough.”

Beeman recently got posts Mackenzie Clinch Hoycard and Taylor Donohue back from injuries, a boon as she’ll likely need everybody for the 16-game battle for Big West tournament seeding and a chance at an NCAA tournament berth. The top two teams get double byes into the BWC semifinals at Anaheim’s Honda Center on March 9. The next six squads must survive preliminary rounds at Fullerton’s Titan Gym (March 6-7).

UH has the league’s seventh-leading scorer in senior Sarah Toeaina (13.9 ppg). She is third in field-goal accuracy, at 55.1 percent, up drastically from her junior year’s 42.4 percent, as the 5-foot-11 guard has eschewed her outside shot and is operating almost exclusively around the basket.

The Wahine sport capable shooters in Julissa Tago (10.8 ppg, 44.2 3FG%), Lahni Salanoa (10.1, 41.3) and Kenna Woodfolk (8.2, 34.3) and a pass-first point guard in Tia Kanoa, who hasn’t shot it well (26.9 percent) but is second in BWC assists at 5.3 per outing.

Sometimes, all of that comes together well. Sometimes it doesn’t.

“Just being disciplined and knowing all of our fundamentals. Just the little stuff. That’s our problem,” Lahni Salanoa said. “We’re either playing too fast or not playing to where we need to be.

“We just need to be a team. We can’t be individuals throughout the whole game, because that’s not going to get us anywhere.”

Northridge center Channon Fluker has dominated (19.7 ppg, 11.4 rpg, 3.0 bpg), no more so than against Seattle on Dec. 30, when she recorded the third triple-double in Matadors history — 28 points, 16 rebounds, and a BWC-record 13 blocks.

Cal Poly’s twin wings, Dynn and Lynn Leaupepe, remain the greatest 1-2 punch in the league, combining for 29.8 ppg.

But Davis forward Morgan Bertsch is the league’s leading scorer at 20.2 ppg. She has yet to score in single digits this season.

“Davis is the No. 1 team in our conference for a reason,” Beeman said. “No slight to the Northridges, the Santa Barbaras. But Davis is proven with their … record, and who they played. They rightfully own that No. 1 spot. They shoot the ball well, they’ve got an amazing big. They’re incredibly well coached.”

Three players in the BWC — Fluker, Bertsch, and UC Riverside’s Michelle Curry — crossed the career 1,000-point mark in nonconference play. Toeaina can soon join them; she’s at 891 after scoring 15 points wearing a protective mask against HPU on Saturday.