APB again, really?

We’ve come to call Arkansas-Pine Bluff by its initials because when a team comes to the Stan Sheriff Center to play the University of Hawaii men’s basketball team for what will be its sixth appearance in eight seasons, you’re pretty much on a by-the-initials familiarity already.

The Golden Lions have been perennially 24-karat for the Rainbow Warriors in that they come cheap and go down easy. Which is, you suspect, why they remain at the top of the ’Bows’ annual must-invite list.

In that they have become a symbol of the ’Bows’ scheduling overall, which has come to rely on the same old suspects, too often being lazy, watered down and uninspired.

Throw in two Division II opponents (Adams State?), plus Division I twinkies Prairie View A&M, Howard and Utah Valley and the 2017-18 schedule is another in a string of disappointing ones.

Last season UH’s strength of schedule was ranked 264th among 351 Division I teams by the NCAA, the school’s worst in at least a decade, which is saying something.

And, yes, we know it was a rebuilding year and all that, but it was also part of a troubling trend. Over the past eight years UH’s strength of schedule has averaged a ranking of 224. Only twice in that span has its SOS been better than 225th.

Every year we get the excuses. Rebuilding year, new coach, young team. … You name it and we’ve heard it.

What we’ve rarely seen is a schedule worth what UH charges its season-ticket holders. With this kind of scheduling UH is making it easy to pass on the season-ticket package and cherry-pick the few decent opponents that find their way onto the schedule.

Most of the best games — such as Miami this year — come in the Diamond Head Classic, where ESPN Events, the tournament’s owner and operator, keeps the largest share of the ticket revenue.

We can — and should — blame the succession of coaches who have lowered the bar on scheduling. But the majority of the fault is with the administrators who enable them. The people, for example, who approved the contracts that made it easy to get bonuses or rollovers for win totals with little regard for strength of schedule.

And the people who not only fail to demand more but also keep signing off on schedules like this one.

The last good schedule UH played was three head coaches ago, when Bob Nash played a schedule ranked 94th for toughness in the 2009-10 season and went 10-20 with it. Of course, it was also Nash’s last season, which is why successors Gib Arnold, Benjy Taylor and, now, Eran Ganot, have avoided anything remotely challenging.

Which brings us back to this year’s pastry shelf of a schedule. I mean, you can understand playing little brother UH Hilo, but two Division II teams in the same year?

What does the other one, Adams State, bring to the schedule besides an automatic “W” in the win column? Chaminade would have been more of a test, but that’s probably why Adams State is booked here instead.

And it isn’t like UH is taking it easy because it has an exhausting road schedule, either. The ’Bows play one nonconference road game this season, at Utah.

Part of the reason they deigned to venture away from the pastry counter that week is for the money the game brings. UH needed the money because it bought itself out of two tough road games (San Diego State and California) in Ganot’s first season for $120,000 and needed to make up the budget hit they took.

So, can we please have an honest-to-Riley Wallace pledge by athletic director David Matlin that there will be a significant and immediate change for the better in future scheduling?

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