After watching the latest end-of-the-season University of Hawaii basketball nose dive, it is hard to imagine there might have been a point when some in the Big West Conference were concerned the Rainbow Warriors could be too well-heeled, too competitive for their league.
Between UH having the largest, most well-appointed arena, biggest crowds and a lucrative TV package allowing them to put more money into coaching salaries and such, we’re told there was an initial fear by some that the Rainbow Warriors might have too much of an edge for the cozy, shoestring-budget conference.
If so, those thoughts, like so many errant shots that led to UH’s quick elimination from the Big West tournament, were badly off-target.
These days the Big West probably can’t believe its good fortune, coming to view UH as the rich rube whose pockets they just picked.
Not only do the ’Bows pay those generous travel subsidies — and what could be better than an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii and a victory? — they have proven to be beatable at home, on the road and at tournament time.
Having a basketball budget that is, on average, probably 35 percent higher than the rest of the conference even when you take subsidies out of it, didn’t assure success for UH. Just more frustration. Especially when the Big West was supposed to have been a step down from the Western Athletic Conference.
Instead, 17-14 UH was just 10-9 against Big West teams, counting conference play and the tournament, and 16-14 against Division I competition overall. You hate to think what the ’Bows’ plight might have been had they remained in the WAC or, horror of horrors, somehow ended up in the Mountain West.
Which is why if there was ever a season in which UH should have ended its growing postseason futility, this should have been it. Instead, even for a team that has gotten past the quarterfinals just once in eight years, this might have been the worst, all things considered. Even UC Irvine playing without its conference honorable mention forward, Adam Folker, did little to lessen the pratfall.
As it was, the ’Bows seemed to peak somewhere around Chinese New Year each season and then flop in March. They ended this season losing three games in a row and five of their last seven. Last year it was six losses in the final seven games.
When you are playing a schedule ranked 255th (among 347 schools) for toughness, it isn’t arduous competition that’s doing you in. It comes down to recruiting (and retaining) talent and coaching it.
How coach Gib Arnold has been unable to recruit and retain capable guards, especially at the point, in three years remains a mystery; even more of one than the premature departure of four players from last year’s team and eight overall since 2010. Or, the four inadmissible recruits from 2011.
Those are things he can ponder heading into the final season of his current three-year, $344,000-per-year contract.
This had been looked forward to as Arnold’s payoff year at UH. Instead, it was the Big West that cashed in.
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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
