If they haven't already, you figure the rest of the Western Athletic Conference is coming to the realization that the University of Hawai'i women's basketball team is somebody best avoided in the upcoming conference tournament.

With three games remaining before the tournament, the resurgent Rainbow Wahine aren't going to win the regular-season title, but their six-game winning streak, during which they have beaten many of the contenders, makes an unmistakable statement on a couple levels.

In short, UH (13-12, 7-6 WAC) is looking a lot more like the team it was expected to be when it was forecast for a third-place finish in the preseason than the seventh-place outfit it had stumbled into being until a couple weeks ago.

A team that had been unable to win back-to-back games anywhere through the first 19 appearances now owns the second-best winning streak by anybody in the WAC this season. Here is a team that blew a 16-point lead and lost to San Jose State, one of the worst teams in Division I, that has since turned around and won both ends of the conference's most arduous road trip, Louisiana Tech and New Mexico State.

The historic breakthrough at Tech, where UH had never won, is more like what we expected to see from a team that returned six seniors from an 18-10 finish a year ago. Indeed, this was supposed to be the payoff year on a group that had been together since their freshman year and has been in Jim Bolla's system for three seasons.

How UH lost eight of 10 games in the month-long stretch before the winning streak was hard to fathom then but may be less so now judging from some of the players' candid comments about acting head coach Pat Charity, who has adroitly got them realizing a lot of that potential.

"She (Charity) encourages you, she's more one-on-one, she'll talk to you," Cassidy Chretien told The Advertiser's Brandon Masuoka. "She's very positive." WAC player of the week Pam Tambini said of the team: "Now it seems they're not so much worried about making a mistake. They're just playing and not thinking, 'What if I do something wrong?' "

Moreover, Charity's willingness to go to the bench early and often has had the dual benefits of apparently energizing the starters and morale.

Now that they have found their winning formula, you hope the Rainbow Wahine can continue to add to it. For once merely the team that was getting beaten regularly, the Rainbow Wahine are becoming a team to beat.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.