ANAHEIM, Calif. >> The Big West Conference’s basketball tournament began for Hawaii when the men’s team squandered an 18-point advantage in a loss to Long Beach State on Thursday night. It ended when the women suffered a similar fate less than 48 hours later.
The Rainbow Wahine held a 17-point lead early in the third quarter, then endured a collapse that enabled top-seeded UC Davis to qualify for the NCAA tournament with a 58-50 win in Saturday’s championship game in front of 1,346 at the Honda Center.
Tia Kanoa scored 15 points while Leah Salanoa added 14 points for the Wahine (15-16). Both seniors made the all-tournament team.
“There are not a lot of dry eyes in that locker room. We know we had the opportunity to win this,” said UH coach Laura Beeman, who added that her team played “an amazing first half.”
However, the 2018-19 season is not done for the Wahine. They accepted a berth to the 64-team WNIT soon after the loss, UH announced. On Monday they will learn when and where they will play next. It will be the program’s 10th all-time appearance in the WNIT and first since 2015.
The second-seeded Wahine dictated terms early Saturday by stifling the top-seeded Aggies’ Morgan Bertsch, a 6-foot-4 center who led the Big West in scoring and was named the conference’s player of the year.
A pair of tag teams hounded Bertsch in the first half. Starting center Laura Rewers, also 6-foot-4, guarded Bertsch while receiving defensive assistance from 6-foot Amy Atwell. When Rewers and Atwell went to the bench, Myrrah Joseph and Lahni Salanoa assumed their respective roles.
As a result, Bertsch missed 10 of 14 field-goal attempts in the first half, while her teammates converted only three of the remaining 13. In addition, UH forced nine turnovers in the first half and used them to score 13 points.
“In the first half, we were really on point,” Beeman said. “Our coverages were good, our angles were good and we were getting into the paint when we needed to.”
Leah Salanoa’s 3-point shot 1 minute, 5 seconds into the third quarter extended the Wahine’s advantage to 37-20. Then began the slow, agonizing disintegration.
Cierra Hall played a pivotal role for Davis (25-6). Hall scored 10 points in the second half by exploiting UH’s defensive strategy.
“Our game plan was to play a little bit more off her and play little bit more on Bertsch,” Kanoa said. “She capitalized on that when she needed to. She’s a great player and she hit her shots, point blank. In the first half, she wasn’t hitting those. She wasn’t getting her layups and we were getting boards off of that.”
Hall’s resurgence enabled Bertsch to make five of her nine shots from the floor in the second half. Defensively, the Aggies’ increased intensity threw the Wahine into chaos.
“In the second half, they definitely pressured us more,” Leah Salanoa said. “I mean, I felt it. I knew I had to do a little more to get our offense going.”
Instead, UH committed eight turnovers in the second half, accounting for 10 of the Aggies’ points, and missed 20 of 25 shots in that half.
“In the second half, the pressure affected us and we forgot where we needed to position ourselves,” Beeman said. “When we missed shots or turned the ball over, we had different pieces on different people who weren’t as used to playing in that position. So we didn’t get the same coverage, and we had a mismatch on the boards.
“A little bit of pressure by Davis in the second half really affected us. The basket got really small and the lights got really bright.”
The baskets never got smaller nor the lights brighter than in the fourth quarter. After Davis ended the third period with a 14-3 blitz that narrowed the deficit to 42-36, Leah Salanoa made another 3-pointer 21 seconds into the final quarter to extend UH’s lead to 45-36.
But the Wahine never made another basket, went without a point for the ensuing 9:29 and waited until 55 seconds remained before grabbing an offensive rebound.
“They got their intensity,” Beeman said about the Aggies. “Offensively, they were pounding us, going into Bertsch and pushing tempo. We got tight on defense and we stopped rebounding as well as we were in the first half. We blew some schemes defensively in the second half and we had some slippage in coverages. With a team like Davis, if you have slippage, they find it.”
Bertsch finished with game highs of 24 points and eight rebounds. Hall contributed 14 points in joining Bertsch, Kanoa and Leah Salanoa on the all-tournament team. Completing that squad were Cal State Northridge’s Channon Fluker and UC Irvine’s Jordan Sanders.
