Now that the Hawaii women’s basketball team has avenged both of its regular-season losses in Big West play, the Rainbow Wahine are in position to lock in the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament.
On a night the two teams behind UH in the standings lost, the Rainbow Wahine extended their winning streak to 12 games with a 72-65 win over Long Beach State on Thursday at The Gold Mine in Long Beach, Calif.
Freshman center Ritorya Tamilo scored a team-high 15 points with seven rebounds, two steals and two blocks and Lily Wahinekapu added 14 points with two 3-pointers, including the dagger 3 with 48 seconds remaining to help UH make up for an overtime home loss to the Beach in early December.
Hawaii trailed early, as has often been the case during its current winning streak, but again prevailed late, using a 39-27 run in the second half to remain in first place in the conference at 12-2 (18-6 overall).
‘I thought we didn’t play bad in the first half, they’re just a really tough team,” Hawaii coach Laura Beeman said in a postgame phone interview. “To be down five with as many turnovers as we had and not rebounding the ball well, the girls understood right away we need to be more physical. They had all of the right answers and then we just had to do some stops for stops.”
The Beach were held without a field goal for more than eight minutes in the fourth quarter, and Jada Crawshaw’s layup with 17 seconds remaining snapped an 0-for-12 drought from the field by Long Beach State (12-11, 8-6 Big West).
By then, Hawaii had seized control. With the win, the Wahine now lead second-place UC Irvine by 1.5 games after the Anteaters lost to UC Santa Barbara on Thursday.
The two teams play on Saturday at noon at Bren Events Center with Hawaii getting a chance to go up by two in the loss column with five games to play.
“Our goal always has been and always will be one game at a time and one possession at a time,” Beeman said. “If we win on Saturday, it gives us little bit of space, but we still have a very tough schedule ahead of us. The win by Santa Barbara over Irvine tonight helps us for sure, but there is still a whole bunch of basketball left.”
Hawaii continued its longest win streak in a decade despite committing 24 turnovers that led to 19 Long Beach State points.
UH outrebounded the Beach 40-32.
Kelsie Imai provided 11 points, seven rebounds, three assists, a block and a steal off the bench and MeiLani McBee chipped in 10 points, five rebounds, a career-high-tying four steals and two blocks.
For the seventh time in its past 12 games, Hawaii fell behind after the first quarter, with the Beach taking a 19-16 lead.
Wahinekapu had six points and Mia ‘Uhila, who didn’t play in the second half after slipping on the court in the first half, added four points. Six UH turnovers and four offensive rebounds for the Beach allowed Long Beach State to play with the lead for most of the first half.
LBSU led by as many as nine in the first half, but a layup by Tamilo and two free throws by Imai helped Hawaii close to 38-33 at the half.
Tamilo didn’t miss a shot in the first half, going 3-for-3 from the field and 2-for-2 from the free-throw line in nine minutes played to lead UH in scoring.
“They tried to get really physical with her — we talked about that, and she had to make some adjustments to her game, but her touch around the basket allows her to do some things that just can’t be defended by some of the posts and bigs in our conference,” Beeman said.
Hawaii shot 54% (13-for-24) from the field compared to 39% (14-for-36) for the Beach and outrebounded Long Beach State 19-14, but turned the ball over 14 times that led to 13 LBSU points.
UH also went 0-for-5 from the 3-point line before intermission.
Brooklyn Rewers gave UH its first lead since early in the second quarter with a right-handed hook in the post to cap an 8-0 run that put the Rainbow Wahine ahead 47-46 with 5:16 remaining in the third quarter.
McBee’s second 3-pointer of the quarter gave UH its largest lead at 54-51 and Hawaii took a one-point lead into the final 10 minutes.
Wahinekapu became the 25th player in UH history with 1,000 career points with her first basket of the game. Including her freshman season at Cal State Fullerton, she has 1,440 career points in NCAA Division I, which would rank fifth at UH.
“For her to get 1,000 points at Hawaii just tells you what type of offensive player she is and how well she plays,” Beeman said.
BIG WEST WOMEN
Conference Overall
W L Pct. GB W L
Hawaii 12 2 .857 — 18 6
UC Irvine 10 3 .769 11
⁄2 16 7
UC Davis 9 5 .643 3 15 9
UC San Diego 8 5 .615 31
⁄2 12 13
UCSB 8 6 .571 4 14 10
Long Beach St. 8 6 .571 4 12 11
UC Riverside 7 7 .500 5 11 13
Cal Poly 5 8 .385 61
⁄2 10 13
CS Fullerton 4 10 .286 8 6 18
CS Northridge 2 11 .154 91
⁄2 4 18
CSU Bakersfield 2 12 .143 10 2 22
Thursday
Hawaii 72, Long Beach State 65
UC Riverside 55, UC Davis 53
Cal State Fullerton 67, Cal Poly 64
UC Santa Barbara 62, UC Irvine 52
UC San Diego 63, CS Bakersfield 45
Saturday
Hawaii at UC Irvine, noon
UC San Diego at UC Davis
Cal State Northridge at Cal Poly
Cal State Bakersfield at Cal State Fullerton
UC Riverside at UC Santa Barbara
HAWAII 72, LONG BEACH STATE 65
RAINBOW WAHINE (18-6, 12-2 Big West)
NO. PLAYER PTS FG-A 3PT FT-A O-DREB TREB A PF TO BLK STL MIN
2 ‘Uhila 4 2-4 0-0 0-0 0-2 2 0 0 0 0 0 7
3 Wahinekapu 14 6-15 2-5 0-0 1-0 1 1 3 5 0 0 32
12 Perez 8 3-5 0-2 2-2 0-7 7 2 2 1 1 2 33
23 McBee 10 3-5 2-4 2-2 0-5 5 1 1 6 2 4 35
24 Tamilo 15 6-8 0-0 3-4 3-4 7 0 2 5 2 2 19
1 Imai 11 1-6 0-1 9-12 3-4 7 3 2 4 1 1 32
4 Lefotu 2 1-1 0-0 0-0 0-3 3 2 4 0 1 0 9
8 Moors 0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
11 Filemu 2 0-0 0-0 2-2 0-1 1 0 1 1 0 0 4
14 Rewers 6 3-9 0-2 0-0 1-3 4 3 2 1 0 2 18
22 Peacock 0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 1 0 0 9
TEAM 2-1 3 0
Totals 72 25-53 4-14 18-22 10-30 40 12 17 24 7 11 200
Percentages 47.2 28.6 81.8
THE BEACH (12-11, 8-6 Big West)
NO. PLAYER PTS FG-A 3PT FT-A O-DREB TREB A PF TO BLK STL MIN
2 Tucker 19 5-17 2-11 7-10 0-2 2 0 2 2 1 1 40
3 Chung 5 2-8 1-4 0-0 0-1 1 3 2 3 0 3 30
11 Loobie 8 2-8 1-3 3-4 2-3 5 1 4 0 0 2 27
12 Crawshaw 12 4-10 2-4 2-2 0-6 6 4 4T 4 1 3 31
22 Richards 10 4-7 0-1 2-2 4-1 5 1 2 3 2 3 27
1 Sonnier 4 2-7 0-1 0-0 1-1 2 0 1 0 1 1 6
5 Ka 0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-1 1 0 1 0 0 0 4
30 Jones-Brown 7 3-8 0-2 1-2 1-2 3 1 3 2 0 2 22
42 Oliva Fernandez 0 0-1 0-1 0-0 3-1 4 0 2 1 1 0 13
TEAM 3-0 3 1
Totals 65 22-66 6-27 15-20 14-18 32 10 21 16 6 15 200
Percentages 33.3 22.2 75.0
Hawaii 16 17 21 18 – 72
Long Beach State 19 19 15 12 – 65
Technical fouls — LBSU 1 (Crawshaw). Officials — Brad Schmidt, Johnny Mendez
Jr., Chaka Wade. A — 591.
