It wasn’t pretty, but the Hawaii women’s basketball team kept its winning streak intact all the same.
The Rainbow Wahine won their fourth straight game, 59-46 at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on Thursday.
Amy Atwell came off the bench to score 24 points on 8-for-16 shooting, including a program record-tying six 3-pointers made for UH (12-10, 6-3 Big West). She was the rare player on either side to shoot it efficiently; Cal Poly forward Sierra Campisano scored a team-high 16 points for the Mustangs (5-14, 2-6), but on 5-for-17 shooting.
Coach Laura Beeman was proud of the way her team handled the longest road trip of the conference season.
“We uglied it up a little bit there in the fourth quarter. It’s tough to win on the road. It’s never going to be easy,” Beeman said in a postgame phone interview. “So when you get a lead on the road, you know they’re going to come back, and that’s what they did. I think defensively, other than some silly fouls there towards the end, our defense was really pretty solid.”
Atwell spaced her 3s across the second, third and fourth quarters in Mott Gym to match her season scoring high. UH dominated the middle two frames to take a 50-31 lead going into the fourth.
Jadynn Alexander added 12 points and Julissa Tago 10 as UH survived despite shooting 23.3 percent in the second half. Last-place Cal Poly similarly struggled after the break at 28 percent.
The Mustangs made only one 3-pointer on 10 attempts, compared to UH’s nine on 36 heaves, three attempts shy of the program record the Wahine set five games ago against Cal State Fullerton.
With sophomore Myrrah Joseph unavailable and junior Lauren Rewers making a return from injury, freshman Kasey Neubert got the start in the post for the first time. She scored two points and grabbed two rebounds in 14 minutes. Reserve center Barbara Rangel also saw action and grabbed five boards.
“When you have injuries and you’re not sure where people are going to be, then you kind of go to Plan B or C,” Beeman said. “We’ve been fortunate we’ve been able to play a lot of people this year, give them some experience.”
UH completes its road trip at UC Santa Barbara (9-12, 4-4) at noon on Saturday. The Gauchos feature the second-leading rebounder (12.9 per game) in the country in Ila Lane, a 6-foot-4 freshman.
“We’re going to be ready. They showed me that tonight,” Beeman said. “We can go with some different lineups and some different looks and these girls are going to suck it up and they’re going to play.”