Dave Reardon: Rainbow Wahine coach Laura Beeman has ability to find teachable moments

It was the fourth game of her coaching career at the University of Hawaii, and Laura Beeman was wondering what she’d gotten herself into. On Tuesday, while getting ready to head off to the dance, she was reminded about that 35-point loss from nearly 10 years ago, the one that she said made her ask herself, “Why did I take this job?”

She remembered Shawna Kuehu, like Beeman a tough-minded competitor, and one of the most confident athletes you’ll ever meet, telling her this:

“Coach, I don’t think we can do this.”

The Rainbow Wahine were playing the Baylor Bears, and at the end, the reigning national champions’ bench had posted as many points as UH’s entire team. The Stan Sheriff Center scoreboard read 77-42. And 6-foot-9 national Player of the Year Brittney Griner was on the court for just 16 minutes.

But, as bad as the final math was, Beeman and her players had already answered her question.

“I can’t be more proud of the way these young women buckled down and competed,” she said in a postgame interview. “The score is not indicative of the steps we made and the direction we’re going as a team.”

Skeptics considered it coachspeak from the wrong side of a blowout against a heavy favorite. But over the next four months, the Wahine continually improved. Beeman gained cred as a straight shooter and, more importantly, the kind of coach that finds the teachable moments in a 35-point loss.

Hawaii finished the season 17-14 — its first winning record in six years. The Wahine made their first postseason appearance in 11 years, going to the WNIT.

Coaches live to see their players improve and develop into a functioning, winning team. Nobody wants to lose, of course. But especially in sports like basketball where an early-season, nonconference hiccup doesn’t ruin your whole year, you can learn a lot about where you are and what you need to do to get to where you want to be.

And that’s where the Wahine are today, in Waco, Texas, for their second NCAA Tournament appearance with Beeman at the helm. UH, the Big West champions, are big underdogs as a No. 15 seed playing a No. 2 seed at their homecourt.

Of course these are different teams a decade later. The Bears (27-6) lost the Big 12 championship game to Texas, and are not quite as good as that Kim Mulkey-coached squad of a decade ago.

Mulkey left for LSU last year. Griner, a WNBA superstar and Olympic gold medalist, is in the news now, still detained nearly a month in Russia (where she plays in the WNBA offseason) under curious and concerning circumstances.

Baylor’s current star is NaLyssa Smith, a 6-foot-2 power forward who could be the first pick in the WNBA Draft. Like Hawaii’s Amy Atwell, Smith is her conference’s Player of the Year.

“She’s one of the best players in the country because she dominates in scoring (22.5 points per game) and getting boards (11.5). She’s extremely difficult to guard,” said Noelle Kakimoto, who worked for Baylor sports media relations as a student and graduated in 2019, when Smith was a freshman and the Bears won their last national championship.

Waco and Honolulu are separated geographically by 3,774 miles, and they’re different in at least that many ways. That’s precisely why Kakimoto’s father, Lance, was encouraged by his father, Raymond, to go to college there in 1980.

“He’d been around the country and the world in the military, so he wanted me to experience something different than the island, even more different than the West Coast,” said Lance, who majored in business and is a financial planner.

Plus, Baylor is a Southern Baptist college and was the alma mater of some of his teachers at Hawaii Baptist Academy.

Noelle is a Kamehameha graduate who works for the public defender’s office and as a freelance sportswriter who covers high school football games for the Star-Advertiser. She fell in love with Baylor when she went to Waco with her dad for a homecoming game.

“It’s the only college I applied for,” she said.

Only a few students from Hawaii attended Baylor during his time, Lance said. But there have been at least 20 freshmen each fall from the islands in recent years.

“They have enough for a Hawaii club now, and their first luau is next week,” he said.

An admissions counselor, Anis Qourzal, began recruiting students from Hawaii in 2015, Noelle said.

Noelle’s mom and Lance’s wife, Natalie, will join them at Friday’s game. They are UH fans, except when Hawaii is playing Baylor in something — like the softball game they went to last week in Manoa.

Although Lance Kakimoto will be among more than 7,000 fans in attendance cheering on Baylor, he respects the coach of his second-favorite team.

“I think highly of Beeman. She’s a phenomenal coach who always gets the best out of her players,” he said.