Rainbows’ home hoops schedule lacks luster

The University of Hawaii men’s basketball home schedule this season is thin on marquee names but rich with marketing potential for schedule cards.

Somewhere on Oahu, it has been suggested, there has to be a bakery willing to align with the Rainbow Warriors’ pastry tray of a home schedule.

Cal State Bakersfield? Arkansas-Pine Bluff? High Point? 

Those are UH’s first three home games and can be considered a Murderer’s Row only if you go by calorie count.

Nothing classic about that Rainbow Classic. Again.

Excluding the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic, which is owned and operated by a subsidiary of ESPN and for which UH does not keep ticket revenue, the home income games for November and December are made up of the aforementioned opening cupcakes plus Hawaii Pacific, Delaware State and Southern.

Not until Florida Gulf Coast, 2013’s NCAA Tournament darling, on Jan. 3, is there a name that will give UH much to take to the bank.

Much of the most challenging portion of the nonconference schedule — Pittsburgh, Brigham Young and Washington State — will be played at neutral sites. The return of former UH assistant Jamie Dixon and Pitt is on Maui, where UH will collect a fraction of what would have been possible at the Stan Sheriff Center. BYU is in Salt Lake City and Wazoo is in Seattle. 

Even Chaminade is at Blaisdell Center, where the Silverswords get the box office take.

To be sure, you have to take a game with a Top 25 program like Pitt where you can get it, even if it is on a barge. But couldn’t UH have found just one recognizeable name it could have played in Manoa in the six games before the Diamond Head Classic? You really have to wonder how much effort even went into it.

Sadly, the quality of scheduling has been on the wane for a while now. Not in the past seven years has UH’s strength of schedule been ranked in the top 115. 

Which is too bad because UH has had some exciting players to sell, as it does this season with the return of Isaac Fotu and a supporting cast. But he can’t do it alone. 

As it stands now, there are fewer home games and little incentive to buy a season ticket if you are a fringe fan. What UH is doing is encouraging its customers to pick and choose among games instead of shelling out for the whole schedule, and that’s hardly the way to reduce the rampant red ink in the athletic department.

Nor is this schedule calculated to give UH a Ratings Percentage Index of the quality to propel it to the postseason if it doesn’t win the Big West regular season title or the conference tournament. 

You would have thought last season, in which the team went 20-11 and the poor strength of schedule meant the only option of postseason play was a buy-in tournament, would have taught a powerful lesson. But apparently a schedule ranked 181st for toughness didn’t prepare the ‘Bows for a better finish or deliver the message about booking opponents. 

Meanwhile the Rainbow Wahine, who had a schedule ranked 56th, were invited to the Women’s NIT at 17-13.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.