The Hawaii men’s basketball team has made preparations to drop an upcoming 2014-15 game against Washington State in Seattle and join the eight-team Gulf Coast Showcase tournament in Southwest Florida.

Should the swap be finalized, it will require a rescheduling of the game against Hawaii Pacific at the Stan Sheriff Center on Nov. 26.

UH was to play a stand-alone game against WSU in the Cougar Hardwood Classic at Key Arena on Dec. 13. But that arrangement has apparently fallen through, sources indicated. Idol Sports and Entertainment, which runs that annual event, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But the founder of Idol Sports, John Hines, died on Aug. 4. at age 46, an online obituary states.

UH and BD Global Sports, which runs the Gulf Coast Showcase, are working on a contract that will cover games on Nov. 24, 25 and 26 — an identical schedule to the EA Sports Maui Invitational just before Thanksgiving. It takes place three days after UH’s scheduled game against Pittsburgh on Maui.

A spokesman for BD Global Sports said Wednesday he could not comment about UH as there was no signed contract, but said he expected completion of the eight-team field by next week and brackets to be announced shortly thereafter.

"Put it this way, there would be a good reason for calling about this," he added.

Seven teams — East Carolina, Evansville, Florida Gulf Coast, Marist, Green Bay, Fresno State and San Francisco — are listed on the event’s website for the tournament played at the 7,000-seat Germain Arena in Estero, Fla.

A schedule change would be the most recent of a handful of alterations made since the initial release of UH’s 2014-15 slate on July 7.

A UH spokesman had no official comment. Coach Gib Arnold, who left for Spain on Tuesday night to watch the FIBA World Cup starting Saturday, could not be reached.

The Gulf Coast Showcase would be the third nonconference tournament the Rainbow Warriors would participate in during the 2014-15 season, along with the Outrigger Resorts Rainbow Classic and the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic.

A schedule alteration of this degree at this stage of the basketball offseason is uncommon, but not impossible. However, an extra piece is involved. The Nov. 26 date with Division II neighbor HPU has been listed as an exhibition on the Sharks’ website, but an official game on UH’s.

"All I know at this point is we have a signed contract for the Nov. 26 game," HPU athletic director Vince Baldemor said. "We intend to honor the contract. I don’t know if other things are happening at this point. … That’s on our schedule, and we look forward to playing them. If there’s other stuff happening, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what they offer and what they’re going to do."

Baldemor indicated HPU might be willing to move the date of the game, but doing so at this late stage could be difficult.

"We’ve always been pretty flexible in trying to accommodate their scheduling," he said. "But there’s only so much we can do. It’s already (nearly) September. We do have a signed contract for Nov. 26. We’ll be good team players as much as we can, but we also have commitments over here."

UH also swapped its season-opening opponent to Arkansas-Pine Bluff from Cal State Bakersfield in the Rainbow Classic. And Florida Gulf Coast was nixed from a game listed for Jan 2. Southeastern Louisiana is tentatively expected to fill that spot.

Hawaii and Idol Sports partnered for special games in the recent past, including last season’s contest against Missouri in Kansas City, Mo., and the BC Basketball Classic against Gonzaga in British Columbia in 2011. Those games included appearance fee bonuses for the Rainbow Warriors.

It wasn’t immediately known if a home-and-home series agreed upon with Washington State for the next two seasons would be honored if the Cougar Hardwood Classic game doesn’t transpire.

The Gulf Coast Showcase, now in its second year, is an exempt tournament (only one of each team’s three games goes toward the scheduling limit) played with a standard eight-team bracket. It was formed with mid-majors in mind; Louisiana Tech defeated Saint Bonaventure in the inaugural title game in 2013.

The Diamond Head Classic is also an exempt tournament but as the tourney host, UH does not burn its allowance of one exempt tournament per season.