University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Rainbow Wahine basketball graduate forward Amy Atwell was named Big West Player of the Year and Head Coach Laura Beeman was named Coach of the Year for the second time.
Atwell was the catalyst behind UH’s run to the Big West regular-season title in her sixth and final year with the program. The team’s only player to start all 26 games, she tops the conference with a 17.9 scoring average, having poured in a career-high 466 points to give her 1,193 as a collegian. She is also seventh in rebounding (6.6 per game) and field goal percentage (.444), third in free throw percentage (.848), second in three-pointers made per game (2.4), sixth in three-point percentage (.375), tied for 10th in steals per game (1.5), and tied for 11th in blocks per game (0.6). Atwell is just the second Big West Player of the Year in program history, and first in more than three decades, since Judy Mosley in 1989–90. More on Atwell.
In her milestone 10th season at the helm, Beeman led UH to 17-9 overall and 13-3 in conference play. She guided the Rainbow Wahine to a pair of home wins to clinch the outright Big West regular-season crown, after being picked fifth in the preseason poll. UH boasts the league’s second-best scoring offense at 65.1 points per game, and shoots a conference-leading 33.7% from three-point range. Beeman’s squad enters the postseason as winners of five straight and 10 of its last 11. She was previously named Big West Coach of the Year in 2014–15. More on Beeman.
The Wahine head into the Big West tournament as the No. 1 seed in Nevada. Winning the tournament would mean putting their dancing shoes on for the NCAA Tournament, aka the Big Dance.
- Related UH News story: Wahine basketball clinch Big West regular-season championship, move to playoffs, March 7, 2022
