Five weeks after playing its last game, the University of Hawaii men’s basketball team is sadly still beset by turnover problems.

Forward Trevor Wiseman, on Friday, being the latest in a growing and troubling exodus of players.

If you are counting, seven of the nine players from head coach Gib Arnold’s initial, two-year-old recruiting class have either quit, transferred or been shown the exit.

In Wiseman’s case, it was announced that he had requested and been granted a release to transfer to another school.

On the heels of forward Joston Thomas and guard Bobby Miles, Wiseman’s is the third departure in as many weeks.

UH has been issuing so many press releases “wishing (fill in the blank) the best” it is beginning to sound like a reusable Hallmark card.

Wiseman’s flight after two years makes Vander Joaquim and Davis Rozitis not only remarkable survivors but answers to the season’s most compelling trivia question: Who are the only remaining members of the 2010 recruiting class?

For the moment, at least.

At this point, UH’s biggest fear has to be that Joaquim, who has so far professed plans to stay for his senior season, looks around one day soon, doesn’t like what he sees and becomes the next ex-’Bow. His loss is the one UH can least afford.

Toss in the four players out of an initial group of six recruits who were unable to gain admittance to UH last year and head-shaking concerns abound.

Already this spring of discontent is one for the ages. Perhaps not since UH was on the way to the NCAA doghouse in 1976 have we seen this kind of short-order turnover.

History in Manoa has shown that many of UH’s most accomplished teams have had a degree of continuity to them. And these Who-Knows ’Bows are going in the opposite direction at a point when the program should be hitting its stride.

Whether it is the players, or the coaches who evaluate, recruit and tutor them, who are most responsible, the signs of a serious disconnect are all over the place. And, as such, they shed some light on that late-season fade that saw the ’Bows lose six of their final seven games and stumble to a 16-16 (6-8 Western Athletic Conference) finish.

It would be time to sit back and immediately take serious stock of the comings and goings — mostly goings — if only the ’Bows had the luxury of time in which to do it.

But with recruiting under way — Wednesday was the first day recruits could sign letters of intent — and so many needs to fill for the move to the Big West Conference, the ’Bows have their work cut out for them.

The concern isn’t just that they will have to begin to build anew and lose games they should be winning in the process. It is also the NCAA Academic Progress Rate hit they could be opening themselves up for.

The APR, a measure of academic performance of enrolled players, is heavily weighted on retention and advancement. When you lose a significant number of players it can come back to haunt you. UH knows this the hard way, having been stripped of scholarships in the past. With a couple of perfect scores in former coach Bob Nash’s final years, they were just beginning to climb out from under earlier sanctions.

Progress this isn’t.

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