Some physical play by Cal State Northridge threatened to knock the Hawaii women\u2019s basketball team off its midseason turnaround.<\/p>\n
The Rainbow Wahine mustered the composure to play through it and pulled off a 64-55 win at CSUN\u2019s Premier America Credit Union Arena on Saturday afternoon, registering their fourth straight win after dropping their first five Big West contests.<\/p>\n
UH won by a nearly identical score (64-52) in another gritty game at Cal State Bakersfield on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Wahine (10-9, 4-5 BWC) were outscored 20-3 in the second quarter and trailed by seven at intermission, but soundly outplayed the Matadors (6-12, 2-7) after the break.<\/p>\n
UH held CSUN scoreless for nearly nine minutes bridging the third and fourth quarters, over which the Wahine went on a 17-0 run. A 9-0 spurt allowed them to put the game away.<\/p>\n
Coach Laura Beeman told Spectrum News in a postgame phone interview that the officiating seemed to change in the second half to tamp down on the bully ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel that really was the difference. We were able to get the ball across halfcourt with a lot more fluidity,\u201d Beeman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cInside touches allowed us to spray the ball out,\u201d she said. \u201cOur guards were able to handle the pressure a little bit better in the halfcourt. And this team just found another level \u2014\u00a0to get stops, to lock into offense. I definitely believe they believe in and are figuring out our process. We can\u2019t play to result. We have to play to our process, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freshman guard Bailey Flavell continued to soak up minutes and shots, finishing with 17 points in 38 minutes on Saturday. Forwards Saniyah Neverson and Imani Perez combined for 25 points and guard Keiara Curtis added nine, snapping an eight-game streak of double-figure scoring.<\/p>\n
Beeman, who was proud of her young players for performing through travel fatigue, felt that UH\u2019s current run of stronger play began two weeks ago, when UH lost 50-47 at conference leader UC Irvine.<\/p>\n
UH hosts UCI (17-3, 8-1) at 7 p.m. Thursday with an opportunity to score its first win against a conference contender at the league midpoint. The Anteaters had their program-record 16-game winning streak snapped at home by UC San Diego, 68-66, on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this group is confident going into that game knowing we played so well at their place,\u201d Beeman said. \u201cThis is the right time for this group to play consistently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brian McInnis<\/a>\u00a0covers the state\u2019s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.\u00a0He can be reached at\u00a0brian.mcinnis@<\/a>charter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some physical play by Cal State Northridge threatened to knock the Hawaii women\u2019s basketball team off its midseason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[19375,6632,6631,151,153,152,19376,1815,2289,127,136],"class_list":["post-148973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-app-college-sports","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-brian-mcinnis","tag-college","tag-hawaii","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}