The Hawaii women’s basketball team toughened up down the stretch to protect home court.
Lily Wahinekapu scored a season-high 19 points with six rebounds and Ashley Thoms added a career-high 18 points in her first start since November to lead the Hawaii women’s basketball team to a 68-55 win over Long Beach State on Thursday night.
A SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center crowd of 796 watched Hawaii (8-7, 5-1) use a 13-2 run at the start of the fourth quarter to pull away in a physical game that was chippy from start to finish.
“Ugly and gritty,” Hawaii coach Laura Beeman said about the win. “I think it was fun for the fans. I don’t know how fun it was for the coaches. We needed a good response after the UC Riverside game and I thought the team came out physical. Defensively we locked things up pretty tight in the fourth quarter.”
MeiLani McBee added 11 points and Kelsie Imai provided her trademark spark off the bench with five points, seven assists, four rebounds, two steals and two blocks as Hawaii remained undefeated at home in conference play to remain a half-game behind league-leading UC Santa Barbara as the only two one-loss teams in the BWC.
UH bounced back from Saturday’s loss to UC Riverside to match its best start in conference play since going 9-1 to open the Western Athletic Conference season in 2000.
“Winning a game after you lose just keeps the momentum going,” Thoms said. “After Riverside it was a hard loss, so getting that win and keeping the momentum where it needs to be and keep going.”
Savanna Tucker had 16 points and Patricia Chung added 12 points and seven rebounds for the Beach (6-10, 1-6), who won both regular-season games against the Rainbow Wahine last season.
Chung was credited with a disputed 3-pointer to end the third quarter after the clocked stopped with 7.9 seconds. The teams continued playing and Chung swished a 3 from the right corner to pull to 55-49 heading into the fourth.
Hawaii forced the Beach into a shot-clock violation on their first possession of the fourth quarter and held Long Beach State to one field goal over eight minutes to push its lead up to 17 on an Imai free throw.
“We got a nice lead going into the fourth quarter and it was just maintaining that lead and taking care of the ball,” Wahinekapu said.
Hawaii center Brooklyn Rewers missed her first game of the season, but UH got help from post player Jacque David, who played for the first time since suffering a knee injury last January at Cal State Bakersfield.
David had four points and three rebounds in six minutes.
“You never, ever want to see a teammate or a player go down. It takes a piece of your soul,” Beeman said. “The momentum shift was big. The fact that she can hit people really hard and it doesn’t faze her — she has to be guarded. She had really big minutes for us.”
Thoms, who started her first game since Nov. 26 against Washington, scored Hawaii’s first eight points in a hectic first quarter.
Hawaii committed eight turnovers but held the lead until Cheyenne Givens’ layup in the final minute put the Beach ahead 21-20.
A McBee 3 put Hawaii back in front for the third time in the second quarter and started a 13-2 run to give UH a 37-27 lead.
UH scored twice in nine seconds during the run when Imai found Imani Perez open on a bounce pass for a layup and then Wahinekapu stole the ball in the backcourt and went in for a smooth left-to-right layup to give Hawaii a six-point lead.
Wahinekapu closed the half with a buzzer-beating putback off her own missed shot to give UH a 39-31 lead going into intermission.
Hawaii held its largest lead of the third quarter on a Wahinekapu 3-pointer that put the Rainbow Wahine ahead 52-36 with 5:12 remaining.
The Beach closed the quarter on a 13-3 run.
Hawaii will close out the homestead on Saturday against UC San Diego, which lost to UC Irvine on Thursday to drop to 7-10 overall and 3-3 in conference play.
BIG WEST WOMEN
Conference Overall
W L Pct. GB W L
UCSB 6 1 .857 — 12 5
Hawaii 5 1 .833 ½ 8 7
UC Davis 5 2 .714 1 9 8
Cal Poly 4 2 .667 1½ 8 8
UC Irvine 4 2 .667 1½ 10 6
UC Riverside 4 3 .571 2 9 8
UC San Diego 3 3 .500 2½ 7 10
CS Fullerton 2 4 .333 3½ 6 10
CSU Bakersfield 1 5 .167 4½ 4 11
Long Beach St. 1 6 .143 5 6 11
CS Northridge 0 6 .000 5½ 2 14
Thursday
Hawaii 68, Long Beach State 55
UC Davis 60, Cal State Fullerton 55
UC Riverside 64, Cal State Bakersfield 62
UC Santa Barbara 70, CS Northridge 41
UC Irvine 57, UC San Diego 49
Saturday
UC San Diego at Hawaii, 7 p.m.
UC Riverside at CS Northridge
Cal State Bakersfield at Cal Poly
UC Davis at UC Irvine
UC Santa Barbara at Cal State Fullerton
HAWAII 68, LONG BEACH STATE 55
BEACH (6-11, 1-6)
MIN FG-A FT-A R A PF PTS
Tucker 39 5-18 5-5 4 0 1 16
Chung 31 3-9 4-6 7 2 2 12
Valenti-Paea 14 4-8 1-2 1 0 5 9
Woodley 38 3-5 0-0 4 3 0 7
Matthews 18 0-2 1-2 5 0 4 1
Cummings 2 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0
Sonnier 9 1-2 0-0 1 0 2 3
Givens 30 2-10 2-6 4 1 2 6
Crawshaw 14 0-2 1-2 4 1 2 1
Moore 5 0-2 0-0 1 0 0 0
TEAM 7
TOTALS 200 18-58 14-23 38 7 18 55
RAINBOW WAHINE (8-7, 5-1)
MIN FG-A FT-A R A PF PTS
Thoms 35 7-12 0-0 3 2 4 18
Wahinekapu 29 6-13 6-8 6 1 1 19
Perez 30 3-7 1-1 6 1 3 7
McBee 29 4-9 0-0 7 0 2 11
Davies 22 0-4 1-2 2 0 2 1
Imai 22 1-3 3-4 5 7 3 5
Berrett 4 0-2 0-0 2 0 0 0
Phillips 17 1-2 0-0 2 1 3 3
Peacock 6 0-0 0-0 0 0 1 0
David 6 2-3 0-2 3 0 1 4
TEAM 5
TOTALS 200 24-55 11-17 41 12 20 68
Long Beach State 21 10 18 6 – 55
Hawaii 20 19 16 13 – 68
3-point goals — Long Beach State 5-21
(Chung 2-6, Woodley 1-1, Sonnier 1-2,
Tucker 1-6, Valenti-Paea 0-1, Givens 0-5).
Hawaii 9-24 (Thoms 4-8, McBee 3-7, Phillips 1-1, Wahinekapu 1-2, Imai 0-1, Perez
0-1, Davies 0-4). Steals — Long Beach
State 15 (Woodley 5, Chung 2, Givens 2,
Sonnier 2, Tucker 2, Valenti-Paea 2). Hawaii
12 (Davies 3, Perez 3, Imai 2, Thoms 2, Phillips, Wahinekapu). Blocked shots — Long
Beach State 4 (Crawshaw 2, Sonnier,
Tucker). Hawaii (Perez 4, Imai 2). Turnovers
— Long Beach State 21 (Givens 4, Crawshaw 4, Valenti-Paea 3, Woodley 3, Matthews 2, Team 2, Chung, Moore, Tucker).
Hawaii 23 (Peacock 4, Berrett 3, Davies 3,
Imai 3, Perez 2, Thoms 3, Wahinekapu 2,
David, McBee, Phillips). Officials — Jen Zylstra, Ashley Clark, Pete Arceo. A — 1,567.
