HONOLULU — The Hawaii women’s basketball team’s bench area increasingly resembles an infirmary. Thursday night’s on-court result left the Rainbow Wahine in search of aid.
UC Davis blew open the game early and staved off UH’s limited comeback attempt to deal the hosts a 57-47 defeat in front of a sparse Stan Sheriff Crowd on Thursday night.
UH (8-12, 6-5 Big West) lost two key rotation players, Jovi Lefotu and Jacque David, for the season in the dozen days since the last time the Wahine suited up at home. Lefotu went down in the final seconds of UH’s three-point loss at UC Santa Barbara last week and David too succumbed to a lower-leg injury in the team’s first practice back in the islands.
They joined guard Olivia Davies, herself done for the year with a knee injury, in observing Thursday’s action with a heavy leg braces and crutches.
It was an uncomfortable watch party as the Wahine shot 25% in one of their worst offensive outings of the season.
“Emotionally it’s been tough, but at the end of the day we have to keep working and stay focused and get the job done,” said point guard Lily Wahinekapu, the older sister of Lefotu who led UH with 14 points.
UH’s rut of losing the first Big West game of a two-games-in-three-days set reached a fifth straight week. In the previous four, the Wahine have come back to win the second game of the set.
To do so again, they’ll have to top Cal Poly (6-13, 3-8) at 7 p.m. Saturday.
“Offensively we’ll struggle a little bit, but we’ll continue to work,” coach Laura Beeman said, crediting Wahinekapu for attempting to lead the team through it. “Right now we’ve got funky lineups and we’ve got to figure out those lineups.
“Getting chemistry and finding new lineups is not something that’s going to happen in two practices,” she added.
In her estimation, UH was sunk by two things that shouldn’t have been affected by new lineup combinations: rebounding (minus six) and free-throw shooting (15-for-24).
Davis (10-11, 6-5) was coming off a 21-point loss at the hands of Long Beach State. The Aggies, the resident power in the Big West until the Wahine dethroned them last season, evened the season series after UH opened up with a rare win in Davis back in late December.
Guard Evanne Turner, the conference’s leading scorer at 15.9 points per game, led the way with 23 on 8-for-21 shooting. She proved a tough cover with her dribble-drives.
On the bright side for the Wahine, they got forward Daejah Phillips back from an undisclosed ailment that caused a two-game absence. Phillips scored 10 with five boards and three turnovers off the bench.
“She’s shaking the rust off. Daejah has the focus and ability to take games over,” Beeman said. “She has to do that from the get-go and not let a bad offensive sequence affect her on defense, or not let a bad call affect her overall.”