Even after a crushing loss on senior night last weekend, the Hawaii soccer team held out hope that it could host a Big West tournament game for the first time.

UH entered Thursday’s regular-season finale at Long Beach State assured of a BWC tournament berth, just the second time for the program. If the Rainbow Wahine beat the Beach on the road, they had a strong chance of returning to Waipio Peninsula Soccer Stadium for a game.

LBSU quelled thoughts of that with a 4-2 victory at George Allen Field to ensure the Beach would get to host a game there on Sunday, and that UH would remain on the road.

UH (5-7-3, 4-4-1 Big West) will be the tournament’s No. 6 seed and head to No. 3 Cal Poly (8-7-3, 6-3-1) for a first-round matchup Sunday.

Cal State Fullerton (8-4-7, 6-1-3) won the regular season with 21 points and will host the semifinals and final Nov. 2 and 5.

It will be UH’s first league tournament appearance since 2019, and first in the six-team version of the event. But the Wahine are not playing their best soccer; they got into the field on a technicality; UC San Diego, in its last year of transitional Division I status, is not eligible for the postseason. The Tritons finished with 15 points to UH’s 13. UC Irvine, with the head-to-head tiebreaker over UH, also had 13, meaning UH would've been out of the top six in another year.

LBSU (10-6-3, 5-3-2) scored three in the first half on Thursday, the first two on penalty kicks.

The Beach added a fourth score in the opening minutes of the second half until UH woke up with a putback goal by Amber Gilbert and a penalty kick score by Mia Foster. It was Gilbert’s team-best seventh goal of the season and Foster’s fifth.

After Sunday’s 2-1 defeat to Cal Poly — in which UH led most of the game, only to yield two goals to the Mustangs in the final six minutes — Wahine coach Michele Nagamine noted UC Irvine won it all as the 6 seed last year.

“You know, we just wanted to get to the conference tournament,” Nagamine said. “The way the season has gone this year, I like our chances just as much as anybody else. We’ve proven we can play with anybody in the conference, and we’ve had a really grueling schedule. The team has been super resilient and have stuck together.”

UH is 0-7-1 in its last eight senior night games going back to 2014, not including ones that were canceled in 2020 and 2021 related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Forward Brynn Mitchell, one of six seniors honored after the Cal Poly loss, said, “I think we know our potential as a team and we thought we had this one. But there’s only up from here and I think we know we can take it all the way. We can compete against any team in this conference. … We’re ready to take people on anywhere.”

LBSU improved to 11-0-3 against UH in the series’ last 14 meetings.

Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.