Olivia Davies gave herself permission to make mistakes.
The University of Hawaii guard had struggled through a recent road trip and acknowledged playing with a somewhat tentative approach in subsequent conversations with the Rainbow Wahine basketball team’s coaching staff.
“I’ve been battling a little bit of my confidence on the floor and my decision making and (being) a little bit indecisive,” Davies said. “I’ve talked to all of my coaches about it a little bit and they’re were just like, ‘Liv, you just have to go and play and you’re going to make mistakes and it’s going to be OK and we’ll figure it out.’ ”
“I feel like last week was the first time I was like, ‘OK, I’m just going to go make mistakes.’ And it worked out.”
Playing with greater freedom — though without being reckless — Davies scored a career-high 17 points in UH’s comeback win over defending Big West champion UC Davis a week ago and contributed 11 in a commanding victory over UC Riverside on Saturday.
The sophomore’s performances helped the Rainbow Wahine (10-8, 6-2 Big West) keep pace with the Big West leaders entering another pivotal road trip starting today at Cal State Fullerton (8-12, 3-7). They’ll then face first-place Long Beach State (16-3, 9-2) on Saturday at the Walter Pyramid.
“A big topic is we don’t want to have any kind of slippage,” Davies said. “Basketball is not something that’s perfect, but just trying to minimize how much slippage we have and trying to continually progress throughout the season.”
UH takes a three-game winning streak into today’s game at Titan Gym in a rematch of a 54-52 win in the conference opener on Jan. 8 in Manoa. Coming out of a pause in the season and with a short bench, the Wahine rallied from a 10-point deficit in the third quarter and Kallin Spiller delivered an assist to Amy Atwell for the decisive layup with five seconds left.
Davies was among the players sidelined for that game, but recalled the energy of the comeback and the finish.
“It was super exciting, especially since we only had seven or eight,” she said. “It was cool seeing how much trust we can have in everybody.”
Davies returned to the rotation the following week and had mixed results over the next six games. In UH’s last road trip, she totaled nine points on 3-for-13 shooting in a loss at UC Santa Barbara and a win at Cal State Northridge.
After talking to the coaches, she went on the attack against UC Davis last Thursday and drew seven fouls to fuel a 10-for-13 showing at the free-throw line. She did most of her scoring from the perimeter against UC Riverside with a season-high three makes from 3-point range in UH’s 76-57 rout and went 4-for-5 behind the arc in the homestand.
She also limited her turnovers to just one in each game while starting at shooting guard and shifting over to the point at various times to take pressure off of Kelsie Imai and Nae Nae Calhoun.
“Olivia’s playmaking and ball-handling ability gives us an incredible luxury to have a lot of rotation at those guard spots,” UH assistant coach Alex Delanian said.
“Her confidence in being in a primary playmaking role is growing and it allows us to be able to toy with the situations a little bit.”
Delanian said the Wahine are also making some moves in their itinerary prior to today’s game in hopes of sparking a stronger start than previous road trips. In UH’s last two trips to California opened with a 24-point loss at UC San Diego and a 14-point defeat at UCSB.
“We just want to make sure they’re in the rhythms like they would be at home,” Delanian said.
The Wahine will look to stay in rhythm against a Cal State Fullerton team led by ‘Iolani graduate Lily Wahinekapu. The freshman guard enters today’s game fourth in the conference with 14.9 points per game while Atwell continues to lead the conference at 18.2.
Wahinekapu led the Titans with 19 points with three 3-pointers in a 63-53 loss to Long Beach State on Tuesday.
“Lily’s obviously playing great … so her getting more and more confidence requires some extra attention,” Delanian said. “For the most part, what makes them good is they’re really solid at what they do. … So it’s not so much a game plan, it’s that play-to-play execution. You know what it is and you really have to be on point every single time and that has been an area of focus for us.”
Big West women’s basketball
At Titan Gym; Fullerton, Calif.
Hawaii (10-8, 6-2 BWC) vs. Cal State Fullerton (8-12, 3-7)
>> When: Today, 5 p.m.
>> TV/Radio: none
>> Online: ESPN+
