JUCO veteran named to Ganot’s staff

For the first time in his coaching career, Norm Parrish gets to breathe at sea level.

"Yeah, maybe I can actually run longer," Hawaii’s new assistant basketball coach quipped on Saturday.

Head coach Eran Ganot announced Parrish — director of operations at Utah the past four seasons and a 20-year junior college head coach — as the second full assistant on his coaching staff.

Parrish, 52, has mined a career out of the Mountain Time Zone. He received his college degrees at Northwest Nazarene in Boise, Idaho, and at Utah State. The native of the Beehive State became something of an institution at Salt Lake Community College, where he won an NJCAA national championship and national coach of the year honor in 2009. Then there was his recent stint with the resurgent Runnin’ Utes and head coach Larry Krystkowiak, where the team increased its win total each of the past four years and reached the 2015 NCAA Sweet 16.

But he itched to coach again, something the operations director is prohibited from doing.

"There’s certain places that interest me, and certain ones I’m not interested in," Parrish said. "Hawaii is one that I’ve always thought could be really good, and I’ve always had interest in going there. So when it opened up, I jumped on it and bugged Eran. So, I’m 52 — if I could stay there for a long time, that’d be great. I’d have no problems at all. I’m not using it as a stop or anything like that."

It helped that he kept tabs on the far-flung school where he sent four players — Troy Ostler, Jeff Blackett, Ahmet Gueye and P.J. Owsley — to finish their college careers in the 2000s. Ganot was on UH’s staff under Riley Wallace when the latter two played.

"The four kids I had at Salt Lake who played (at UH), they all four loved it," Parrish said. "And I’m pretty familiar, I’ve gotten to know Coach Ganot for quite a while. I’m familiar with what Coach Wallace had going there. I think it’s a great place that has the potential to be one of the haves obviously in the Big West. I think it’s made for success."

Ganot lauded Parrish’s track record of getting nearly half of his junior college players to the Division I level while maintaining academic standards. Parrish also had a reputation as a successful international recruiter, which ties in with Ganot’s philosophy.

Ganot called him a "well-rounded coach."

"Everyone kind of knows about him because of what he’s done," Ganot said. "His teams at Salt Lake have always been really good. You watch him work in practices and games, and see him on the road, things like that. … He does an unbelievable job of relating to his players, spending time with them on, off the court."