With one attention-grabbing victory, the hunter became the hunted.

The Hawaii women’s basketball team pulled into a tie for first place in the Big West Conference with a thrilling 74-71 overtime win over league-leader Pacific on Saturday. With five games remaining, the program’s first regular-season championship since 1997-98 is a distinct possibility.

Maintaining primacy will be no easy task as UH plays its final road games at fourth-place UC Santa Barbara today and at third-place Cal Poly on Saturday.

"There’s not going to be any letdown from those two teams," UH coach Laura Beeman said. "They know what’s at stake and they’re coming after us."

UH flew to Los Angeles on Wednesday and got in a practice at USC, a program where Beeman was once an assistant. From there, the Rainbow Wahine departed north for the central coast.

UC Santa Barbara is the only Big West team to defeat UH at home, a 51-50 decision on Jan. 26. The Wahine ran Cal Poly off the court 61-43 two days before that, but the Mustangs are dangerous; they already swept Pacific home-and-home and are even with the Wahine and Tigers in the Big West loss column.

The Wahine will again be challenged with polar-opposite paces in these rematches.

"As far as the expectations, I’m not going to let up," Beeman said. "If anything, I’m going to put the screws to them a little bit more. That’s not because we’re in first. That’s because of where we are in season."

The Gauchos play the slowest pace in the conference by grinding teams down to the end of the shot clock. The Mustangs are at their best galloping up and down the court.

"I think every team in this conference is so different," junior guard Sydney Haydel said. "It’s like night and day. With Santa Barbara, they’ll take the entire 30 to shoot a shot. But I think we’re fundamental in what we do, and we’ll be able to adjust, whether it’s SLO (San Luis Obispo) getting down really fast with their point guard, or Santa Barbara slowing it down. I think we’ll be fine. We’ll be able to adjust."

Against Pacific, UH displayed a much-improved ability to break ball pressure. Redshirt freshman Ashleigh Karaitiana closed out the win with a 3-pointer from the left corner with 14 seconds left in OT.

The team’s second-leading scorer (9.1 ppg) behind Kamilah Martin, Karaitiana is thoroughly enjoying this turnaround season after being a bench observer to the 11-19 struggle of 2011-12.

"Last year was a really difficult year for me, practicing every day but not getting an opportunity to play with the girls," Karaitiana said. "Watching how the team was last year and how it is this year, we’ve transformed so much."