Hawaii WBB Earns Seven Big West Honors in Final Conference Season

The University of Hawai’i women’s basketball team secured seven different conference honors on Tuesday afternoon, seeing a handful of different Rainbow Wahine honored in the program’s final campaign in the Big West Conference.

Bailey Flavell, Ritorya Tamilo, Saniyah Neverson, Imani Perez and Keiara Curtis were the five UH players to receive recognition from the league. Neverson, Perez and Flavell each secured spots on the Big West 2nd-team while Flavell and Curtis each were named to the conference’s all-freshman team.

“Excited for the kids,” head coach Laura Beeman said of the five players honored by the league. “That’s what you always want, is for your kids to get recognized, and for as many kids that received awards, I’m definitely proud of this group and the way they’ve started to play well with one another.”

Flavell and Tamilo each received one of the league’s seven specialty awards, with Flavell earning Freshman of the Year while last year’s top Big West freshman, Tamilo, snagged Sixth Player of the Year for the Rainbow Wahine in her sophomore campaign.

A 5-foot-10 guard from New Zealand, Flavell won the fifth Big West Freshman of the Year award in program history after she led UH in scoring during the regular season with 12.5 points per night and started all 30 contests. She’s on track to be the first freshman since Kamilah Jackson in 2010-11 to lead the Rainbow Wahine in scoring and gives UH back-to-back Freshman of the Year winners for the second time in program history.

“We always have known that Bailey has been an unbelievable individual player,” Beeman said of the star guard from New Zealand. “I think it’s been the transition into understanding that she’s more than just a scorer. She’s a tremendous facilitator. She definitely gets on the boards. I think Bailey has a Defensive Player of the Year award in her repertoire one of these days with us. I think she does not recognize what a great defensive player she is.”

Flavell also earned spots on the All-freshman and All-Big West 2nd-team for her debut campaign in the islands. Tamilo tallied 24 of her 28 appearances for UH from off the bench in 2025-26, blocking 40 shots while averaging 5.8 points and 4.3 rebounds in only 15 minutes of work per game. It’s the eighth time in program history that the Big West Sixth Player of the Year was awarded to a Rainbow Wahine reserve.

“I think it’s a no-brainer,” Beeman said of Tamilo taking Sixth Player of the Year honors. “If Tori wouldn’t have gotten Sixth Player of the Year, I think there would have been something wrong with the Big West and the voting.”

Keiara Curtis joined Flavell on the Big West’s All-freshman squad after averaging 9.4 points per game and handing out a team-best 63 assists. She also tallied 23 steals, good for second-most among Rainbow Wahine, and shot 39% from 3-point range while drilling a team-high 39 triples.

“I think if Bailey wouldn’t have gotten [Freshman of the Year], Curty would have,” Beeman said about the dynamic young guards. “I think that [Flavell and Curtis] are a tag team. They’re each other’s Batman to Robin, right? They feed off of each other. I think their energy is great. I think the one thing you’ve seen with Curty as the season has gone on is her personality is coming out … now you just see how charismatic that young woman is, and it’s contagious.”

Flavell and Curtis are just the second duo of Rainbow Wahine to make a Big West All-freshman team in the same season, joining Daejah Phillips and Kelsie Imai as the lone pairs of UH players to do so. Imani Perez was named all-Big West 2nd-team and All-Defense for the third consecutive season after leading the conference in blocked shots with a career-high 48 over her 29 appearances in her final year of eligibility. The 6-foot-4 senior helped pilot the Rainbow Wahine to the top defense in the conference and fifth-best defense in the nation, holding opponents to 34.9% shooting while giving up the 19th-lowest point-per-game total in the country at 56.7 across 30 games in 2025-26.

Beeman had hopes that Perez would finally break through and be recognized by the conference as the top defensive player in the Big West after her senior campaign, but the 14th-year head coach made sure to emphasize the forward’s importance to Hawai’i’s success.

“I think from the outside, [Imani] may be a little underappreciated. I also know that there are a lot of teams that when we walk on the court know that their best player is going to see Imani Perez and that makes it very, very difficult for them,” Beeman said of her soft-spoken but loud-impact senior.

“[Imani] knows she’s our defensive player of the year, and she’s been mine for the last four years,” she finished off.

Saniyah Neverson also made all-Big West 2nd-team for the Rainbow Wahine after cementing herself as one of the best newcomers in the entire conference. A 6-foot forward who transferred to UH from Northern Arizona in the offseason, Neverson started all 30 games for Hawai’i and scored 10-plus points in each of the final eight games of the season. The senior tallied career highs in points, blocks, steals, assists and 3-point shooting in her lone season in the islands. According to Beeman, that hardly scratches the surface of explaining Neverson’s impact.

“I think we hit the jackpot,” Beeman quickly said about the NAU transfer. “I think Saniyah’s not just an amazing young woman off the court, she’s an amazing teammate on the court and I was hoping she would get Newcomer of the Year … We knew that was going to be difficult with our placement in conference, but [Saniyah] has done so much for our play in the post, our guard play … She’s just an unbelievable human being, great player and like I said before we just scored pulling her out of the transfer portal.”

UC Irvine’s Hunter Hernandez was named the Big West Player of the Year while teammate Jada Wynn received Newcomer of the Year honors for the conference. Anteaters head coach Tamara Inoue got Coach of the Year for the second time in her career after helping UCI to a program-record 26 wins.

UC San Diego’s Makayla Rose won her second consecutive Best Defensive Player award and split Co-Best Hustle Player recognition with Cal State Fullerton’s Cristina Jones.

Hawai’i will take on the winner of No. 5 Cal State Fullerton / No. 8 CSUN in the 2026 Credit Union 1 Big West Women’s Basketball Championship quarterfinals on Thursday, March 12, at 9 a.m. HT. The winner of that game will advance to face top-seeded UC Irvine on Friday at 9 a.m. HT in the semifinal round.