Alexis Whitfield remembered the sour feeling quite well.

The UC Santa Barbara forward channeled thoughts from the 2023 Big West women’s basketball championship game into Thursday’s rematch with Hawaii at the Thunderdome in Santa Barbara, California. Whitfield, a 6-foot-2 senior, submitted a career-best game of 23 points and 19 rebounds as the Gauchos jumped on the Rainbow Wahine early and dealt the visitors a 65-53 defeat.

UH rallied from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to stun UCSB, 61-59, at the Dollar Loan Center in Henderson, Nevada, last March and advance to a second straight NCAA Tournament.

The stakes were not the same Thursday – it determined who would hold first place nearing the midpoint of the conference’s 20-game regular season – but it still meant something to the Gauchos.

"It was a very tough loss last year, and when you go through that, it puts a chip on your shoulder," Whitfield, who shot 8-for-16 from the field and sank all six of her free-throw attempts, told UCSB Athletics afterward. "Today was all about the energy, from the jump we had a ton of energy. That energy is infectious, and it isn't so much living off the past, but today we came as a unit and it was the best energy we have had in a long time."

UCSB (13-6, 7-2 BWC) sank its first five shots of the game to grab an early lead and won comfortably despite going without a field goal for the final 5:38. Its lead was as large as 22 points near the start of the fourth quarter.

“It was too little Hawaii,” UH coach Laura Beeman messaged Spectrum News. “We didn’t show up with any intensity at all.”

UH (9-8, 6-2), which had held first place coming into the week, couldn’t make the Gauchos pay for the late lapse as the Wahine couldn’t hit a shot in the final 3:31.

In the loss, point guard Lily Wahinekapu scored nine points, giving her 1,005 for her three-year college career that includes her freshman season at Cal State Fullerton. The Kaneohe native has 578 points in a UH uniform.

Olivia Davies scored a season-high 14 points for UH, while Daejah Phillips scored 14 points off the bench.

Four teams have two league losses in a competitive upper tier of the standings. Cal Poly (10-8), Saturday’s Wahine opponent at Mott Athletics Center in San Luis Obispo, California, is one of the other two. Tipoff is noon Hawaii time.

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