Gib Arnold is seeking help from the best.

After Wednesday’s Hawaii basketball practice, the Rainbow Warriors coach said he will take a two-day trip next week to Kentucky to sit in on practices of the defending national champion Louisville Cardinals.

Besides his goal of garnering new tactics to apply back at UH, Arnold will also recruit the Kentucky area on the trip Tuesday and Wednesday, he said, which comes on off days from practice for UH.

Arnold said he doesn’t have a long-term relationship with Louisville coach Rick Pitino, but he does go back with Cardinals assistant coach Wyking Jones, with whom Arnold worked during assistant stops at Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine.

"I talked to (Pitino) a lot in the summer about it," Arnold said. "Just told him I was going to try to make it and it just worked out where I could spend a couple days with them, a day and a half. … Just hopefully learn a few more things there, then next week we’ll start putting in presses and our zone defense."

Pitino, a former UH assistant coach under Bruce O’Neil, was pressed into service as interim head coach for the ‘Bows during the 1975-76 season. He went 2-4 to end that season but has since compiled gaudy records at Boston University, Providence, Kentucky and now Louisville, where he’s been for 13 seasons.

He became the first coach in NCAA history to win a national championship at two different schools (Kentucky and Louisville) with the Cardinals’ 82-76 defeat of Michigan in early April capping a 35-5 season.

Pitino is known for his up-tempo offenses and stingy defense, attributes that Arnold covets. The Cardinals held opponents to 58.8 points per game and a .395 field-goal percentage last season.

Such a meeting of the minds during preseason practices would be considered extremely rare, if not impossible in past years. However, the NCAA expanded first practice dates for teams by two weeks and diluted the amount teams may practice in a given week.

"So it just gives me two days where we don’t have practice, which normally doesn’t happen," Arnold said. "So to take advantage of that, you recruit or you get to go see another team’s practice. It doesn’t happen that often, especially with head coaches, and it never happens usually in the same area of the country, like a West Coast (team). But it does happen."

Arnold pointed out his team compared notes at practices with UTEP and Miners coach Tim Floyd, a longtime mentor, over several days in El Paso, Texas, while preparing for games at New Mexico State and Louisiana Tech two years ago.

"When you have relationships it’s not too uncommon," Arnold said.