Coach Ganot primed to raise bar for UH hoops schedule

Faster than you can Google “the University of Tennessee-Martin”  — yes, those Skyhawks — Hawaii has just filled the last puka of its 2016 football nonconference schedule.

Barring any changes — or a sudden suicidal desire to play 13 games in 13 weeks again — that means the Rainbow Warriors are likely set through 2019. That’s no small  accomplishment given UH finances, the restive landscape of college football and the two-game pullout by Kansas.

Which now leaves us with the matter of the men’s basketball team, whose regular season tips off four months hence against … well, somebody.

With those season-ticket renewal forms having already gone out, the question of whodaguys on the schedule is a timely one.

And, we’re told, answers are coming shortly. 

Since there was little turnover in players from the past regime, the schedule will be one of rookie head coach Eran Ganot’s biggest opportunities to put his stamp on the program forthwith. Especially since the schedule he inherited came with plenty of fill-in-the-blank opportunities. (The notable exception being the North Carolina game in 2016). 

If you asked Norm Chow — and we have — one of his most candid regrets was in not getting control of his schedule. Publicly he’ll say, “We’re just going to play the best we know how wherever they send us …”  Privately, he wouldn’t wish the road gauntlet of Ohio State, Wisconsin and Boise State on anybody but, maybe, Steve Sarkisian. 

Ganot, meanwhile, has gotten about as much scheduling carte blanche as any first-year head coach at UH in anything. 

In just over three months on the job, we’ve seen signs Ganot hasn’t been content to just accept the few games already signed. Soon after taking over he began taking a jackhammer to the schedule, including a $120,000 buyout of the contract for the Las Vegas Classic. The four games that cut loose — road appearances at San Diego State and California among them — mean Ganot has pretty much a wide-open slate to work with. Though time and his late hire have certainly been factors. 

For all his youth (33 years) and lack of command experience, one facet where we’re told he has previously distinguished himself has been in scheduling. That was one area where Ganot and the man who hired him, athletic director David Matlin, the former director of the Diamond Head Classic, got to know each other.  

At UH the scheduling bar for men’s basketball has been set disappointingly low in recent years. Ankle height, actually. This past season the strength of schedule was ranked 234th by the NCAA. Previously it was 215 and 222.

Part of that was UH’s fault for putting guaranteed extension clauses in the head coach’s contract without regard to quality. Presumably Ganot’s contract, whenever it emerges, will be devoid of such language.  

Compare schedule strength with that of the Rainbow Wahine of Laura Beeman, who were 140th this past season and have a series of Women’s NIT appearances largely because of their strength of schedule.

The test now will be to see what Ganot does with the opportunity. 

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