When Laura Beeman was a little girl growing up in Southern California, Sundays in the fall meant church, family and football.
Many times there would be Subway sandwiches and milkshakes as well, but afternoons after church were always reserved for watching football with her dad and her brother.
As the Hawaii women’s basketball coach and her team close in on winning the regular season in the Big West and securing the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament next week in Henderson, Nev., the program’s success can be traced back to those days in front of the television.
“I’ve always said I run my program very different. I run it like a football-style system. I’ve always been a football fan,” Beeman said Monday. “I always loved how you had your offensive coordinator, your defensive coordinator, special teams, and then head coach is the orchestrator, but everyone was so good at what they did and to expect one person to do all of that I don’t think is realistic, even in the game of basketball.”
With associate head coach Alex Delanian running the offense and assistant coach Derrick Florence in charge of the defense, Beeman has essentially trusted both of them, along with assistant Khalilah Mitchell and the rest of the staff, to coach the various parts of the game they are in charge of, offering her occasional insights and opinions when needed.
The result has been a well-oiled machine that has compiled a 41-13 record in Big West play over the past three seasons.
Hawaii (18-9, 15-3) needs only one win in the final two games of the regular season this week to clinch the No. 1 seed in the tournament. Two wins would not only guarantee winning the regular season outright, but would give Beeman 200 victories in her 12 seasons running the program.
When she arrived in 2012, UH was on a string of six straight losing seasons. It has taken time, and there certainly have been bumps along the way, to build a consistent winning program, but the Rainbow Wahine are finally here, with continuity being one of the biggest reasons why.
“Consistency within your staff, consistency within your team, I think all of that has to do with the success of your overall program,” Beeman said earlier this season. “You get continuity, you get consistency and then you have players coaching players. You have more of a player-led team than a coach-led team. They discipline each other, they talk to each other and I don’t have to do any of that stuff. When I can come out and just do X’s and O’s and don’t have to worry about energy, effort, discipline, it’s a fun place to be.”
It has also allowed the machine to keep going despite considerable roadblocks.
Beeman has had far too many discussions with the training staff over the past two seasons as Hawaii lost three players to season-ending knee injuries a year ago, including two in the span of five days.
This season, UH has had to play without Michigan State transfer center Brooklyn Rewers for a considerable portion of conference play. Junior forward Jacque David missed the start of the season and is still working to get back to her former self after suffering the second ACL tear of her career last season.
An already thin post-play rotation then took a major hit when Imani Perez suffered an injury late in a win at Long Beach State two weeks ago and had to miss Hawaii’s final homestand of the regular season.
The feeling could be a lot different today if UH didn’t somehow survive the loss of one of the highest-rated defensive players in the country this season to complete a perfect conference record at home.
Yet as they always seem to do, they managed to survive it on the scoreboard.
“The relationship that we all have with one another and that we celebrate each other and we can live through really hard times and come back around and we all love each other and respect each other I think is huge,” Beeman said. “Obviously I have some very talented players, but they are also willing to put their personal stuff aside for the success of the team and the success of the program, and you don’t always get that.”
David, who hadn’t played more than 19 minutes in a game this season, exemplified everything that has made this program successful in recent years in the past two games.
With Perez out, now was the time the team needed her, no matter where David was mentally coming back from a serious knee injury — and she answered the call.
David hit two big 3s and had 10 points in 33 minutes in Thursday’s overtime win against UC Davis. She came back and was able to give another 27 minutes with season highs of 11 points and eight rebounds against UC Riverside two days later.
“At practice, we knew that Imani was hurting and we were going to save her, and after, I thought, ‘Oh, OK, I guess I’ve got to step up to the plate.’ ” David said. “I don’t think there’s a secret to (our success). I think we’re all just super close to each other and we all have a super chemistry and we go to practice and get to work. I think it’s all us keeping each other accountable.”
Although they will not play until the semifinals of the BWC Tournament a week from Friday, Hawaii will stay on the mainland following games on Thursday at Cal State Northridge and Saturday at Cal State Bakersfield.
The Matadors and Roadrunners are a combined 6-32 in conference play.
Rainbow Wahine Basketball
Hawaii (18-9, 15-3 Big West) vs. Cal State Northridge (3-26, 1-18)
>> At Premier America Credit Union Arena, Northridge, Calif.
>> Thursday, 4 p.m.
Hawaii vs. Cal State Bakersfield (8-20, 5-14)
>> At Icardo Center, Bakersfield, Calif.
>> Saturday, noon
>> Streaming: ESPN+
>> Radio: None
