One of the concerns when you turn over a Division I college basketball program to a 33-year-old with no head coaching experience is the extent of the learning curve.
In the past two weeks we’ve gotten a glimpse of the gradient Eran Ganot has apparently labored with.
In that span Ganot’s most experienced assistant coach has taken flight and a key recruit has failed to qualify academically. Meanwhile, new season-ticket sales have been underway for 10 days (renewals closed at the end of June) and the schedule still hasn’t been announced.
These are the kind of needless offseason potholes that this new, promised attention-to-detail hire was supposed to spare a program too long shadowed by them.
Ganot is sharp and can be a hard worker, qualities that, along with a strong interview, were cited by the search committee that had multiple candidates with head coaching experience to consider.
Fortunately, this is still the offseason, and the previous coaching staff has left the strong foundation of a team that went 22-13.
Ganot’s early task since signing on nearly five months ago was to bolster them for a Big West title run this season while also building for the future. Which is why it would have been advantageous to have his first recruit, Bryce Canda, the 6-foot, 4-inch combo guard and demonstrated 3-point shooter from Central Wyoming College, on hand for two years. Now, at best, Canda told the Star-Advertiser’s Brian McInnis, he might be available second semester.
You’d like to believe that a 20-year-old can take care of his own academic responsibilities, but the reality is that some players have to be shepherded through the process and painstakingly watched over en route. And the fact that Canda was on campus and working out with the team this summer and still didn’t make it suggests both parties came up short.
Canda’s immediate ineligibility means that just two of the four members of what has so far been Ganot’s first recruiting class, Sai Tummala and Sheriff Drammeh, will be eligible this season, and the lanky, 6-foot, 3-inch, 160-pound Drammeh might be more of a project than an immediate factor. Jack Purchase is mandated to sit out as a transfer from Auburn.
The sudden departure of Norm Parrish as assistant coach last week potentially looms larger in the big picture. Parrish had 20 years of experience as a head coach and won a junior college national championship. His wide recruiting contacts (he was instrumental in landing Tummala) would have been useful.
But his counsel would have been especially beneficial for the fledgling head coach as an adviser and sounding board, coaching up the coach. Instead, for reasons we are left to imagine, Parrish left at the first opportunity for a head coaching job at tiny Westminster College in Utah, a program transitioning from NAIA to Division II.
This isn’t to say that Ganot can’t become the successful Division I head coach UH desperately needs him to be. Only that the first bend in the learning curve shows signs of being significant.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
