Rainbow Wahine basketball team searches for a leader

If this Hawaii women’s basketball season has proven anything, it is that anyone can be the hero on a given night.

Defensive specialist Jadynn Alexander, offense-minded wing Amy Atwell and freshman post Myrrah Joseph are among the nine players who’ve led the team in scoring this season.

That’s been a double-edged sword for the Rainbow Wahine, who have seven games left in the regular season — including two at home this week — to discover some semblance of steadiness heading into the Big West tournament.

“I think it’s really difficult. I think part of our problem is we don’t have that true go-to that every night you know you’re going to get consistency and you’re going to get a double-double from them,” coach Laura Beeman said. “I think that’s a huge problem for us.

“It’s gone from a Jadynn Alexander to a Makenna Woodfolk. We’ve covered the spectrum on our team of who our high scorer, offensive threat is going to be.”

Consistency aside, UH (9-13, 5-4 BWC) is in decent shape. The Wahine are tied for fourth with Cal State Northridge and a first-round bye in the tournament is in play.

Holding firm at home this week would help matters. UC Santa Barbara (today) and LBSU (Saturday) are below UH in the standings, but that’s been far from a certain indicator of success or failure this year.

Last Thursday, the grab bag of possible outcomes worked to UH’s advantage, as Atwell came off the bench and torched UC Irvine for 19 points on 8-for-11 shooting in a two-point victory.

On Saturday, it did not. Joseph was one of the few to show up in a 56-40 loss at Long Beach State. Save her 6-for-9 shooting for 15 points and nine rebounds, it was one of the team’s worst offensive performances of the season — 25.5 percent shooting overall.

Of the two opponents, Irvine was expected to be the tougher challenge.

“I mean, as you can tell, there’s two different teams going on with us,” said Atwell, who was scoreless in nine minutes at the Pyramid. “The one that can beat (UC) Davis, the top team in our conference, and really compete with the big teams. And then the other team that shows up, we lose to CSUN, we lose to Long Beach in games like that. It’s tough. We just gotta figure out what we’ve done to prepare for those games and (then) performed well. We just have to try to do it again, mimic it for the games we’ve been struggling with and really figure out what has been the difference in those games.”

In its conference wins, UH is scoring 64.6 points. In its losses, 48.0.

At LBSU, the 5-foot-10 Joseph, who hails from nearby Carson, was far removed from her frequent foul trouble earlier this season and found success working mismatches at center. She’ll look to repeat that in the rematch this weekend.

“I’d just like to see us come out and give it our all. Leave it all on the court knowing we played our best,” Joseph said. “That’s the only thing I’m looking for … because we’re so capable of it and we have such great room to grow as a team.”

It’s “Pink Night” tonight in support of breast cancer awareness. Pink shirts while be distributed at Gate A while supplies last, per UH.