HONOLULU — An early taste of Big West action left the Hawaii women’s basketball team with a sour sensation on Saturday night.
Long Beach State, overcoming a narrow travel window and tired legs, pushed through to claim a 73-69 road victory in overtime in front of a hostile crowd of 983 (1,762 tickets issued) in UH’s earlier-than-usual Big West opener at the Stan Sheriff Center.
[Note: See below for more photos of Long Beach State-Hawaii basketball.]
A frustrated Laura Beeman credited the Beach for its game plan of physicality and multiple defenses. She rued a lack of defense in transition and on inbounds plays and key lapses in rebounding for the reigning Big West regular-season champions.
“They exposed a lot of things that I think had been creeping up on us, but it definitely feels doubly worse because of the expectations of the girls,” the UH coach said. “We’ll move on. We’ll get better.”
It snapped a 13-game winning streak in Big West games at the Sheriff for UH (5-3, 0-1) dating back to February 2023. The Big West debuted “Bold Week” in early December to ensure that the rest of the 20-game conference schedule would have no three-game weeks.
Point guard Lily Wahinekapu tied her season high of 20 points in the loss, including all seven of UH’s points in the extra period. But in the final seconds of OT, she had a shot from underneath the basket blocked and had her pass out stolen when she grabbed the rebound.
“I think it was a very up-and-down game and we were trying to stay together but I think we needed to mentally lock in better and take care of the scout,” Wahinekapu said. “We didn’t really do that and it showed. The rebounding and transition, we talked about it but we didn’t take care of business.”
Her younger sister Jovi Lefotu returned from an absence in the three games of last week’s American Savings Bank Rainbow Wahine Showdown and scored nine points in a season-high 26 minutes, time partially due to Daejah Phillips’ apparent back injury that required treatment in the tunnel in the fourth quarter.
Lefotu showed her effectiveness in transition with back-to-back layups to give UH a one-point lead with 3:21 to play in regulation. Wahinekapu added a double-clutched bucket in the paint for a 61-58 lead with 1:21 to go.
“I think we had an advantage with the numbers we have on our team,” Lefotu said. “They were running with about eight players and I’m pretty sure they were tired so we were just pushing tempo.”
The Beach had to take fouls and it put Lefotu on the line. Lefotu missed two free throws, and after Beeman offered support with a 1-on-1 talk during a timeout, the junior out of Iolani missed a third before sinking one for a two-point lead.
“(I’ve) had conversations like that with many players in my career, I’ve had them with this one,” Beeman said, nodding at Wahinekapu in the postgame press conference. “The fact that they put themselves in position to be on the free-throw line is a great trait that both of them have. Yeah, we need to make them, but that’s not why we lost this ballgame.”
LBSU guard JaQuoia Jones-Brown scored from either side of the baseline in the final 14 seconds of regulation to tie the game.
UH inbounded in the halfcourt with three seconds left to go for the winning shot in regulation but Lefotu’s leaning 3 from the left wing was off the mark.
In overtime, guard Savannah Tucker, who played all 45 minutes, scored six points while point guard Patricia Chung hit the go-ahead 3-pointer with just over a minute left. Tucker, a 5-foot-9 guard who’s played all of her five-year college career at LBSU, finished with 23 points on 11-for-12 shooting at the line.
Beeman was frustrated with the officiating for much of the game but put much of the outcome on her team's transition defense and breakdowns in communication.
"When you’re looking at the back of someone’s jersey, it’s hard to get a stop," Beeman said.
Second-year Beach coach Amy Wright said she was pleased for her players to emerge with the victory, but was not happy about the “Bold Week” format that required her team to play Cal State Fullerton on Thursday night, fly out to the islands hours later and practice here late Friday night.
Still, it was breezy compared to the 55-point drubbing that LBSU (5-3, 2-0) absorbed at Michigan in November.
“We’ve had a lot of punches we’ve taken in the face … so coming in here it wasn’t anything new,” Wright said. “The fans weren’t new, the officiating wasn’t new, everything not going our way wasn’t new. We’d experienced adversity, so I think that really helped us carry over into right now.”
The game was tight the whole way; neither team led by more than six points and it was tied at 28 at half.
Freshman center Ritorya Tamilo had 14 points, nine rebounds and a season-high six blocked shots for UH, which swatted 13 as a team.
UH will play three nonconference games before resuming Big West play in January. It hosts Arkansas-Pine Bluff (2-6) in a stand-alone game on Dec. 16 before heading to the mainland for the San Diego Invitational and a break over Christmas.
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.