HONOLULU — The Hawaii women’s basketball team welcomed itself back to the Stan Sheriff Center by posting its best defensive performance of the season.

UH, playing at home for the first time since Dec. 3, stifled Cal State Bakersfield, 67-43, on Thursday night to improve to 2-0 in Big West play. It was UH’s seventh straight win over BWC opposition going back to last season.

“This is home,” guard Daejah Phillips said after scoring seven points and matching her career best of 10 rebounds in her return from a one-game absence. “We know we kind of have a target on our backs, so anybody we play we have to give them our best effort because they’re giving us their best effort. We played with a purpose.”

A crowd of 641 (1,417 tickets issued) saw UH (5-6 overall) hold CSUB to 27.1% shooting and a season-low point total for a Rainbow Wahine opponent.

The Wahine set the tone by outscoring the Roadrunners 21-5 in the first quarter. A 22-point halftime advantage dipped under 20 only momentarily to begin the second half and remained in blowout territory the rest of the way.

CSUB coach Greg McCall went small after the game’s opening minutes, but Beeman refused to follow suit.

“We’ve had a struggle maintaining those leads, so to keep the lead throughout … that’s hard to do. You have a tendency to lose focus,” Beeman said. “We have to adapt better when teams go small, because I don’t want to have to adapt to what we do. I don’t want to take our bigs out to play better against smalls.”

Center Brooklyn Rewers had nine points and three blocks, forward Imani Perez scored all of her 10 points after halftime and freshman post Vivienne Barrett scored a season-high seven points in nine minutes on her birthday.

“I felt like we had a pretty big advantage,” Barrett said of the interior game. “They started off with their big girl (6-foot-5 Cassidy Johnson), but started going small so it made it easier for us to get position inside.”

Point guard Lily Wahinekapu became the seventh different player to lead UH in scoring this season with 15 on 6-for-11 shooting.

UH pressed CSUB (4-8, 1-2) most of the game. Both teams finished with 19 turnovers, a statistic Beeman rued along with the Wahine’s regular bushel of offensive boards allowed; this time there were 11.

CSUB guard Jordan Olivares, the 'Runners' second-leading scorer, went 0-for-12 from the field in a scoreless outing. Nseije Ortiz corralled seven of her team’s 11 steals.

UH hosts Cal State Northridge (2-10, 0-2) at 7 p.m. Saturday looking for its first 3-0 Big West start in Beeman’s 12 years as coach.

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