Beavers beware. Wahine focus
on BeaversBy Grace Wen
gwen@starbulletin.comAfter being snubbed by the NCAA selection committee, the Hawaii basketball team has turned its focus and perhaps its anger to the WNIT.
Hawaii opens the tournament against Oregon State tomorrow at 5 p.m. Hawaii time in Gill Coliseum. The Rainbow Wahine are playing in their fifth WNIT tournament.
"Obviously, we're very disappointed," Hawaii coach Vince Goo said. "We're going to take a deep breath and let it out. We're going to go up there and play with pride. We're not going to go up there and try to prove anything. We have an opponent on the other side of the court. We're going to try to do the best we can.
"As coaches, we're not going to ask our players to do anything special because everything we've asked of them throughout the year, they've done it."
Practice at 5 a.m. yesterday was normal for the Wahine.
After practice, the Wahine boarded a 7 a.m. flight from Honolulu to Portland. Hawaii arrived in Corvallis, Ore. yesterday evening after driving two-hours on a bus from Portland. They were greeted by cold and drizzly weather but it wasn't bad for Karena Greeny, Natasja Allen, Christa Brossman and Chelsea Wagner who are from the Pacific northwest. It is a homecoming for Wagner who is from Springfield, a town approximately 40 miles away.
The former Oregon state player of the year spent time with her family yesterday.
Though Hawaii is disappointed about not making the NCAA tournament, the Wahine are excited about a playing in new venue.
"See if we made the tournament, everybody would have came but now look, nobody came," Greeny said. "We hope we can keep going. We hope we can keep going up towards Washington.
"We'd like to take our frustrations out. It wasn't the NCAAs last year but it was pretty neat to go so far. And now we get to play at a Pac-10 school we've never been to. It's pretty neat to play some place different."
It is definitely different, though the competition might be familiar. Four teams from the Pac-10 are in the bracket including USC, Washington and Oregon. OSU is playing in its second straight WNIT. The Beavers lost in the first round at home last year to BYU.
All-American Felicia Ragland leads the scoring for OSU with 20.1 points per game. The Beaver's 16 wins match last season's total and are the most since finishing 19-9 during the 1995-96 season. The Beavers reached the Pac-10 tournament semifinals before getting routed 71-55 by second-ranked Stanford. OSU finished tied for fourth in the Pac-10 with USC.
The Wahine and the Beavers are tied with three wins and losses each in the all-time series. Hawaii defeated Oregon State in a preseason tournament two years ago.
If the Rainbow Wahine defeat the Beavers, they would advance to face the winner of the Oregon-St. Mary's game.
Hawaii reached the semifinals of the WNIT last year. Hawaii is 5-6 in four previous tournament appearances. The Rainbow Wahine's best showing was in 1992 when they finished second to Georgia Tech.
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