The Hawaii women’s soccer team saw its Big West tournament hopes dashed in a 2-1 loss at Cal State Bakersfield on Sunday night.

Jaiden Gore slotted the winner past goalkeeper Kennedy Justin in the 63rd minute and the Rainbow Wahine could not put in a tying shot to remain mathematically alive with one regular-season game remaining.

Realistically, UH (4-7-8, 2-3-4 Big West), with 10 points in the Big West table, needed to win Sunday have a shot of finishing in the top six. Instead, CSUB (8-7-2, 5-3-1) clinched a spot and kept the Wahine out of range of sixth-place UC Irvine (15 points) going into a matchup against the Anteaters on senior night at the Waipio Soccer Complex on Thursday.

“Everyone knew going into the game that it was a must-win situation, which is hard to play through that kind of pressure,” UH coach Michele Nagamine told Spectrum News in a postgame phone interview.

It started well enough. Izzy Ayala got the Wahine on the board in the fourth minute with a header off Alice Davidson’s corner kick.

Mya Clarke got it back for CSUB in the 23rd.

“We scored first on a set piece, and they scored on two set pieces. It’s tough when things go down that way,” Nagamine said. “Playing Bakersfield at home, it is a tall order. Them and Riverside are probably the two hardest places to play at, just because those fields are very, very dark and they’re very, very good at home.”

Those are concerns of a Big West era that is drawing to an imminent close. Thursday will mark the end of the program’s 13-season BWC tenure, during which UH made three conference tournaments and went one-and-done in those appearances.

UH soccer will take a 17-year NCAA Tournament drought into the Mountain West Conference in 2026. The program won the Big West regular-season championship for the first and only time in 2024, which allowed UH to host the BWC championship but did not result in a run to the NCAAs.

A follow-up effort proved difficult, the 15th-year coach Nagamine said, due to myriad factors that included unavailability of UH’s new on-campus practice field until midseason and a handful of players suffering season-ending injuries and illnesses.

“The lack of field, it’s been brutal, having all these moving pieces and less time on the field because there’s so many moving pieces being in transit (to other practice sites),” Nagamine said. “Some people will say it’s an excuse, but we’re just dealing with the facts here.

“The fact is, it’s been a rough, rough season from an adversity standpoint.”

She said the program will now prepare to honor its nine outgoing seniors Thursday as they would if they were still in tournament contention.

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