By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Sports Columnist
When the University of Hawai‘i’ Wahine basketball team arrived at its hotel on a snowy Montana day in 1990 for the NCAA Tournament, it found a marquee that read: "Go Lady Griz, Beat the ’Bows."
By the time the Wahine had awakened the next day, Wahine point guard Fran Villarmia had shimmied up a frozen 20-foot pole and changed it to: "Go ’Bows, Beat the Lady Griz."
When you are the Wahine, postseason vagabonds of women’s basketball, you make yourself at home on the road anyway you can.
When your postseason is played out of a well-tagged suitcase and by following a dog-eared Rand McNally, you yearn to see how the other half lives.
Which is why, after never having made a postseason appearance at home, tomorrow night’s first-round Women’s National Invitation Tournament game against Santa Clara at the Stan Sheriff Center, is so important for the Wahine.
After trips to Amarillo, Boulder, San Diego, Seattle and points in between in 39 postseason - conference tournament, NCAA and WNIT - appearances spent elsewhere, this one looms large.
"Probably the biggest game we’ve ever played at home," head coach Vince Goo acknowledges.
For years, a succession of Wahine have, as they traipsed through airports and tried to adjust to other teams’ arenas, dreamed about what it might be like to play a postseason game at home.
In the days of playing in ramshackle Klum Gym, it was a distant, impractical vision. Even in the well-appointed Sheriff Center it still eluded them, one of the few UH teams not to have played host to a postseason event.
"I remember a coach long ago telling me, ‘your program will never get bigger until you can play at home in the postseason,’ " Goo recalls.
For only then does the homecourt advantage enter the equation. Only then does a team significantly better its odds of advancing in prime time.
To do that the Wahine need to do well on two important fronts. With this kind of stage, they need to win, of course. And they need to draw well at the box office. Approximately 3,000 paying fans - or nearly triple their home average this season - are required for UH to break even on a financial guarantee given the WNIT, Goo said.
Do those things and not only does everybody go home happy, there is also a chance to play host to a second-round game against the winner of Oregon State-Brigham Young.
For the Wahine, tomorrow isn’t just about chasing a championship, it is about opening doors for the future.
A home game is something they’ve been waiting to put up on the marquee.
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