There was plenty of time to sit and stew on recent shortcomings.

After dropping a 78-64 game at Cal Poly for a third straight loss Saturday — representing the low point of the season — the Hawaii basketball team undertook the usual three-hour-plus drive from San Luis Obispo down to Los Angeles early Sunday morning.

Then the Rainbow Warriors cooled their heels in an LAX terminal for about seven more hours, awaiting their flight home because of a maintenance delay. They finally arrived back in Honolulu that night, after the Super Bowl finished.

“It’s definitely time to reflect, for sure,” guard Brocke Stepteau said Monday of the return voyage. “The vibe was kind of quiet, as it is when you lose, especially a couple in a row. I think guys are ready to get back in the gym and turn it around. It’s not the end for us. We still got a lot of games and we’re still confident we can turn it around and get back to how we were playing earlier. So, I think that whole drive and the flight gave everyone time to reflect, which can be a good thing sometimes.”

The difficulties began at home when Kyle Allman dropped 40 points in Cal State Fullerton’s 69-66 upset on Jan. 27, and continued in an 84-82 overtime loss at first-place UC Santa Barbara on Thursday. In a matter of days, UH tumbled from first to sixth in the Big West.

Cal Poly, a bottom-feeding team UH beat by 12 at the Stan Sheriff Center last month, stung the most.

UH (13-8, 4-4 BWC) hosts last-place UC Riverside (5-17, 0-8) on Wednesday. On paper, it’s a prime opportunity to break the third losing streak of at least three games in Eran Ganot’s three-year tenure just as the team turns into the second half of league play.

Ganot targeted two program cornerstones he’s seen lapse significantly over recent days, tying together Allman’s monster game, a spirited comeback that fell short at UCSB’s Thunderdome, and a second-half meltdown at Cal Poly’s Mott Athletics Center.

“I think it’s been something that’s an unfortunate trend right now, our inability to defend and rebound,” Ganot said. “That’s why we’ve had success and why we haven’t had success. We’d better fix that, and fix that quick.”

UH, once among the Big West leaders in both categories, is now middling in them.

Over the losing streak, it’s allowed 52.5 percent shooting from the field. On the trip to UCSB and Cal Poly, it was outrebounded by a combined 28, including a season-worst margin of minus-17 against the Mustangs.

The Rainbows led by seven at halftime of that game but were floored by two huge Mustangs runs in the second half instigated by 3-point hits from a wide cast of characters. It seemed to shake UH’s confidence.

“I thought they hit some tough shots in some stretches, but there’s some things we could’ve done better, in terms of defending the 3, giving up penetration that led to 3s, and in that same sequence missing some bunnies that we can’t let affect us on the other end,” Ganot said. “So, we’ve got work to do and we learn the hard way. Until we fix those, we’ll continue to learn the hard way.”

UH went back to some basic ball-handling and post drills in Monday’s practice that are commonplace in October preseason but rare in the conference crunch of February.

“We gotta get back to the basics, the fundamentals,” Ganot said. “Our stance, our shows, our ball screens. One-on-one point-of-attack defense, our block-outs. Sometimes people skip steps … what if our prep’s not right? What if our talk’s not right? And I think we’ve always been good at getting back to that.”