HONOLULU — The Hawaii women’s basketball team came back a long way in order to travel farther still.
According to Laura Beeman, head coach of the Big West champion Rainbow Wahine, it was well worth it to return to the islands after winning the Big West tournament in the Las Vegas Valley, get a day or two of rest, then embark for Waco, Texas, site of their NCAA Tournament first-round game against host Baylor at 10 a.m. (Hawaii time) on Friday.
“I think it’s really important to come back and celebrate this,” Beeman told local media Tuesday morning as she pointed to about 100 fans, UH staffers and members of the band who sent the Wahine off to fanfare as they boarded the team bus behind the Stan Sheriff Center.
“This is part of the championship moment. Had we stayed in Henderson, they wouldn’t have been able to celebrate this. I do know it’s a long flight. If we’re fortunate enough to win two games, we’re not going to come home. They need to experience this … aloha spirit that we talk about so much.”
UH, with a travel party of near the maximum allotment of 75 people, boarded a nine-hour chartered flight for the Lone Star State, courtesy of the NCAA.
There, the 15th-seeded Wahine face a Texas-sized challenge in the No. 2 Bears, the Big 12 regular-season champion that has been a No. 1 or 2 seed in 11 straight NCAA Tournaments.
Baylor (27-6) features senior forward NaLyssa Smith, who recently picked up Big 12 Player of the Year honors for the second straight season – the first Bears player since Brittney Griner to do so.
“I think Baylor is a very experienced team,” UH center Kallin Spiller said. “Obviously, they have a lot of great competition in the Big 12. They’re very athletic, very physical. I think in a lot of ways they are going to challenge us. But if we bring our game … we’re going to put up a fight.”
UH (20-9) has won eight straight games and 13 of 14, while Baylor is coming off a loss to Texas in the Big 12 tournament championship game.
Wahine players were all smiles at Tuesday morning’s practice.
“This is definitely a different monster that we’re facing, but it’s basketball, and we have to show up and play,” Beeman said. “I talked to them this morning about, ‘I don’t really even want to be the Cinderella team. Let’s go play basketball, show them what we can do. … You’re a good team. You deserve to be here.’
“Hopefully the lights aren’t too bright. We can’t get down against this team. But we’re going to play Hawaii basketball.”
UH teams used to regularly travel to the state of Texas in the old Western Athletic Conference, with opponents like Rice, SMU and TCU on the schedule. Times have changed, and UH’s programs in the California-centric Big West no longer regularly go beyond the West and Mountain time zones.
“It’s a great opportunity to represent not just their program and our department, but our whole university and our whole state,” UH Athletic Director David Matlin told Spectrum News, adding he saw the Wahine on “SportsCenter” after it won the Big West tournament title. “The coverage these kind of things get – I saw us on SportsCenter after we won in the Big West. Just positive news and really a tribute to the job that Laura, the coaches and especially the players have done.”
The Rainbow Wahine are making their seventh all-time NCAA Tournament appearance. They are 1-6 with the lone win coming from the Judy Mosley-led squad over Montana in 1990. UH last made the tournament in 2016.