To guarantee one more road trip, the Hawaii women’s basketball team must capitalize on this one.

The Rainbow Wahine find themselves in tight quarters near the bottom of the Big West Conference standings with two weeks to play in the regular season.

In other words, right where you don’t want to be. The last-place team stays home from the conference tournament in Anaheim.

The seventh-place Wahine (10-15, 3-9 Big West) play a challenging remaining schedule, but can separate themselves from the bottom of the pack with a road win this week at either Cal State Northridge (14-13, 7-6) today or Long Beach State (4-22, 2-10) on Saturday. Wins at home in the final week before the tourney, against UC Santa Barbara (11-14, 8-5) and Cal Poly (14-11, 8-5), are far from certain.

“We have to create separation,” UH coach Laura Beeman said as her team boarded the bus behind the Stan Sheriff Center prior to their flight out on Tuesday. “We’re battling right there with Long Beach, and I don’t want to leave them to a tiebreaker.”

UH, which beat the 49ers at home, can all but guarantee itself tournament qualification if it can complete the season sweep at the Pyramid.

Cal State Fullerton is also right behind Hawaii at 2-10.

“(The 49ers) are coming off of a win from Fullerton, so any given night anybody can win and we understand that,” senior guard Sarah Toeaina said. “So we really have to show up and we’re not going to take any team for granted this trip.”

UH is 0-6 on the conference road. The last time the program went winless on the road for a full conference season was in the WAC of 2009-10. The Wahine haven’t missed a conference tournament in program history.

They had mixed results against this week’s teams at the Sheriff, beating LBSU 74-66 on Jan. 13 and losing 70-58 to CSUN on Jan. 25.

Matadors center Channon Fluker (19.0 ppg, 12.2 rpg) was the greatest impediment to Wahine success in that one.

Fluker’s monster games against Hawaii have been no fluke. She is averaging 27.0 and 10.5 in six meetings, including 34 and 17 last month.

“We’ve watched a lot of film. We’ve seen a lot of different schemes teams have thrown at her, trying to make it uncomfortable down under the basket,” Toeaina said. “We’re going to try to make it uncomfortable as well and try to make any shot she puts up a tough one. We know she’s a good player and she’s going to make shots, but if we control what we can control and make shots on the other end, we’ll be able to handle business that night.”

Toeaina needs 28 points to match Ayesha Brooks for 14th on the Wahine career scoring list at 1,131 points. Point guard Tia Kanoa, at 124 assists, needs six more to crack the single-season top 10.