It hasn’t been that long — as of Friday, two full seasons — since Washington State women’s basketball head coach June Daugherty roamed the sidelines in the same position at Washington.

But the juxtaposition of the Huskies (6-21, 2-15 Pac-10) facing their past will occur against WSU (11-17, 4-13 Pac-10) tonight.

UW assistant coach Loree Payne, who played for Daugherty during UW’s run to the Elite Eight in 2001, talked about the implications of tonight’s contest.

“It’s a big rivalry, especially since I played for June here,” Payne told reporters. “I’ll be the first one to go give her a hug before the game ... but I’ll [also] be the first one that wants to go and get a ‘W’ for the Husky program.”

Freshman guard Kristi Kingma also believes it will be a big game and mentioned her relationship with Daugherty.

“I’m really excited to get out there, especially [since] June was the first coach that recruited me,” Kingma said. “[But] I think it’s more weird for the people that actually played [for her] because she was their coach.”

Although the Huskies’ have had their share of struggles — including their school-record 12-game losing streak — the Dawgs have a chance to complete a season sweep against the rival Cougars, having beaten them 71-58 in their first Pac-10 game early in the year.

“As tough as our season [has] been, it would pretty much make our season to beat them twice,” Kingma said. “With all the struggles that we’ve gone through, it’s definitely something that we’re looking forward to and we’re hoping to be able to get some momentum off of.”

Kingma, along with UW’s leading scorer Sami Whitcomb, has gotten more attention from opposing defenses recently, which has cut down her scoring.

“It’s been tough because especially as a freshman, I didn’t think that defenses would key in on me that much,” Kingma said. “I’m still learning the game and having to learn how to deal with those defenses is tough. [But] if they’re keying on me, that means other players are open and that that’s been working to our advantage.”

WSU has also improved since the last meeting and has a better conference record than the Dawgs.

“They’ve got two freshmen in [Jazmine] Perkins and [April] Cook, who are top-10 in the conference in scoring,” UW head coach Tia Jackson told reporters. “They’re just playing much better basketball, they’ve had as many practices and games as we have ... not to mention, they’ve got four conference wins.”

Reach reporter Honsen Lin at sports@dailyuw.com.