The University of Hawai’i women’s basketball team will begin its first road trip of the season as it opens its final campaign in the Big West Conference during “Bold Week.” The Rainbow Wahine are scheduled to play UC Davis on Thursday, December 4, in Northern California, followed by a game at Cal State Fullerton on Saturday, December 6.
Hawai’i started the season with a seven-game homestand, finishing with a 4-3 record. The team is looking to defend its Big West regular-season title after losing three straight games against veteran opponents in last week’s American Savings Bank Rainbow Wahine Showdown.
The Big West’s “Bold Week” was introduced last year to create early-season interest and establish a consistent Thursday-Saturday schedule for conference play.
Head coach Laura Beeman leads Hawai’i into these matchups with an overall record of 226-172 over her 14 seasons. Freshman Bailey Flavell has been leading the team with an average of 13.1 points per game and earned All-Tournament honors in both the Bank of Hawai’i Classic and last week’s Rainbow Wahine Showdown. Sophomore Ritorya Tamilo has returned to the rotation, posting a team-high field goal percentage at 56% and averaging 8.2 points per game. Senior Izzy Forsyth had a notable performance against Santa Clara, hitting three three-pointers in the recent tournament finale. Transfer senior Saniyah Neverson leads the team in rebounds, averaging 5.4 per game.
Statistically, Hawai’i leads the Big West Conference in field-goal percentage defense by holding opponents to just under 36% shooting and also tops the conference with an average of 4.7 blocks per game. The team has shared playing time across its roster; ten players are averaging at least fourteen minutes each contest, ranking second in bench points within their conference and twenty-eighth nationally.
Both Hawai’i and UC Davis are playing their final seasons in the Big West before moving to the Mountain West Conference starting with the 2026-27 season. During their tenure (including years as part of PCAA), Hawai’i holds an all-time conference record of 274-174 over twenty-five years, having secured six regular-season titles and four championship crowns.
The upcoming matchup against UC Davis marks their thirty-third meeting since January 1976; UC Davis currently leads the series eighteen wins to fourteen. UH has won only three times out of eleven visits to Davis but last won there on December 29, 2022. Both teams have split their meetings evenly since 2022.
UC Davis head coach Jennifer Gross enters her fifteenth season with a career record of 254-168. The Aggies have recently won three consecutive games and rank eighth nationally for most three-pointers made per game (10.3). Ryann Bennett is leading UC Davis scoring efforts at eighteen-and-a-half points per game while center Megan Norris averages twelve points along with more than ten rebounds per contest.
Against Cal State Fullerton—the fifty-fifth meeting between these teams—Hawai’i holds a series advantage at thirty-six wins to eighteen and is riding a twelve-game winning streak that began March eleven, two thousand twenty. Cal State Fullerton’s new head coach John Bonner previously led Cal State Dominguez Hills’ women’s basketball program for nine seasons before joining this year.
Cal State Fullerton comes into this matchup after losing to Loyola Marymount; Cristina Jones is currently leading Titan scorers while Nicole Steiner contributes both offensively and defensively through scoring and rebounding averages.
