Hawaii has work to do after loss to Florida Gulf Coast in home opener

Florida Gulf Coast’s quick-strike offense put Hawaii on the defensive throughout the Rainbow Wahine basketball team’s home opener.

The visiting Eagles fired 3-pointers early and often to open up a commanding lead in the first quarter and raced away to a 65-45 rout in the second game of Friday’s Bank of Hawaii Classic doubleheader at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center.

Florida Gulf Coast, the nation’s most prolific 3-point shooting team for the past three seasons, drained 12 from long range and led by as many as 30 in the second half to spoil UH’s home debut before a mid-afternoon crowd of 407.

“You don’t ever want to take an L like that on your home court, particularly your opening game,” UH coach Laura Beeman said. “That’s a really good team that we played, and we played really bad basketball today.”

FGCU guard Tishara Morehouse, the ASUN preseason player of the year, went 3-for-5 from 3-point range on her way to a game-high 17 points and swiped three of the Eagles’ 10 steals. Guard Kaela Webb hit four 3-pointers to account for her 12 points.

After UH faced a group of guards in the 6-foot range in a loss to Portland last week, FGCU’s guards, led by the 5-foot-3 Morehouse, pestered the Wahine into 22 turnovers and the Eagles (3-0) built a 26-8 advantage in points off of takeaways.

“They don’t put that much pressure in the full court, but they do in the halfcourt. They’re really fast and quick,” UH guard Lily Wahinekapu said.

In her first official home game with UH, Wahinekapu led the Rainbow Wahine with nine points on 3-for-9 shooting and the Wahine shot 35.3% as a team. Sophomore guard Daejah Phillips and freshman Jovi Lefotu added eight points each. Lefotu went 4-for-5 from the field.

Forward Jacque David finished with seven points, including a 3-pointer, in her season debut, and forward Kallin Spiller grabbed 11 rebounds.

With FGCU firing from long range, then falling back on defense, UH held a 48-27 rebounding advantage. But the Eagles committed just eight turnovers, the first coming with less than a minute left in the first half.

“The way they play offensively speeds you up offensively, and we’re not ready to play fast basketball until we are ready to execute,” Beeman said.

The Rainbow Wahine (0-3) have a day to regroup before taking on Lipscomb in the tournament finale at 2 p.m. Sunday. San Diego beat Lipscomb 49-45 in Friday’s first game.

“Gotta have a next-play mentality,” Wahinekapu said. “We have a new team we’re playing, so (today) we’re just going to watch film on them and study their game and hopefully make adjustments from this game to the next.”

The Eagles took command early Friday and took 13 of their first 17 shots from behind the arc. They hit four 3s in opening up a 19-6 lead in the first quarter. FGCU hit three more 3-pointers in an 11-0 run to open the second quarter and led 30-6 when Morehouse drained her second of the period.

On the other end, the Eagles forced 12 turnovers in the first half to take a 39-19 lead into halftime.

Webb hit two 3-pointers in a 10-0 run to start the third quarter to stretch the lead to 30. The Eagles finally cooled off a bit late and went without a field goal for the last 5:14 of the period. By then, they were well on their way to improve to 3-0 in the all-time series with UH.

“We have to make a decision that we want to execute on both sides of the ball, and if that happens then we’re a very, very different team,” Beeman said.

The Wahine get another shot at FGCU, which is in the midst of an 11-day stay on Oahu, on Nov. 26 in the Rainbow Wahine Shootout.