Rainbow Wahine play for fun of it
By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer
TULSA, Okla. — Their one shot at the NCAA Tournament is to win here. And the University of Hawai'i Rainbow Wahine realize it is a length-of-the-court shot.
To reach a third consecutive Western Athletic Conference Tournament championship game, UH must beat host Tulsa tonight (4:30 p.m. HST) and probably upset the sixth-ranked team in the country (Louisiana Tech) in a Friday semifinal. Then they would have 24 hours to put the program's greatest win in perspective and prepare for the final.
With a roller-coaster 15-12 record, power ranking near 90 and No. 5 seed, a fourth straight Women's National Invitation Tournament might not even be an option for the Rainbow Wahine, though organizers have sent entry forms to UH to fill out.
After UH coach Vince Goo watched his team lose to Rice on Senior Night March 1, he figured all the x's and o's in the basketball world were not going to help his frustrated team. Since then, through the first two road victories of the season and practices leading to tonight's game, the focus has been on fun.
"Sometimes you need to remind them to have fun," Goo said. "When you lose a lot of close ones, maybe you should be reminded of that. Put things in perspective. After the Rice game, I said 'I might be wrong but you might have tried too hard.' They put a lot of pressure on themselves. You maybe lose perspective sometimes. You need to have fun. You'll be able to perform a lot more efficiently."
His team took to the new perspective with a passion at Boise State, blowing out the Broncos, who had bumped three WAC teams out of second at home this season.
"We got into their heads early, kept going at them, kept scoring," UH freshman Brittany Aiwohi said. "They didn't know how to stop us from the start."
Senior tri-captain Michelle Gabriel, who has played in the WNIT every year of her career, was shocked at what a difference a new perspective made.
"Against Boise it was a whole different world," she said. "Vince emphasized having fun. When has Vince ever done that?"
He has done it every day since. Hawai'i pulled its road record up to 2-7 — the WAC average this season — with a win Saturday at Texas-El Paso, nullifying a sloppy first half with a near-perfect second.
When the Rainbows arrived here Sunday, he invited the players to their first team dinner of the season. They passed, preferring to do laundry. "I think they were worried I was going to take them to Golden Corral," said Goo, referring to the Rainbow men's lucky charm of a restaurant, which gets little culinary respect.
Monday, the team collected on its meal at a nearby steakhouse and continued to digest their newfound focus.
"We play best when we're having fun," senior Christen Roper said. "We realized that at Boise. Vince said just come out and do two things — have fun and play smart. That's pretty much all we were going for. It changed our will to win. We were more fired up. It was all just happening."
It is really all that is left to work on this season. The teams here know one another and have beaten one another up so badly all season that no one, aside from LaTech, probably has a chance of going anywhere if it doesn't win this week.
Hawai'i and Tulsa (14-15) have no tactical secrets and little degree of separation. The Rainbows lost here, 45-42, Feb. 1, with both teams shooting 28 percent. That was the beginning of a slump that saw UH lose seven of nine. Since that victory, the Golden Hurricane has gone on its own 7-of-9 slide, including a 66-64 loss in Honolulu less than two weeks ago when Gabriel scored a career-high 18 points.
Hawai'i knows it has to keep Tulsa out of its transition game — "They're a team that plays in major spurts," Goo says, "they can blow you off the floor in two or three minutes" — and contain Allison Curtin. The WAC's top scorer is averaging more than 23 points and has led her team in scoring all but twice this season. Tulsa knows it has to prevent the Rainbow Wahine from having more fun here, where it averages nearly 2,000 fans.
Goo calls the homecourt advantage "huge," but believes his team is more confident now than it has been all season. It has won three of its past four to guarantee an eighth straight winning season. Ironically, this team is now less concerned about winning and losing than maybe any in Goo's 16-year career.
"To have fun, you don't make winning and losing your main objective," Goo says. "You can get lost with it. We want to win, but the road you take to get there can be different depending on your personalities. They need to be ready to play, but enjoy the moment also.
"On this trip we played four halves and three were very good. I think the players are smart enough to make a comparison and judge what makes them have fun and what doesn't."
OVER AND BACK: Today's UH-Tulsa game will be broadcast live on 1420 AM beginning at 4:15 p.m. ... UH coach Vince Goo expressed disappointment that senior Christen Roper was not included on the WAC's All-Defensive team. That was his only reaction to Hawai'i getting shut out — for the first time in its seven-year WAC history — on the all-conference awards released Sunday. The WAC picked five-player first, second, all-defensive and all-newcomer teams. ... Last year was the first year the Rainbow Wahine did not have at least one player on the first team.
