Will this be Dave Shoji’s final season coaching the Wahine and how far will this team go?

CINDY LUIS
Star-Advertiser sports reporter

One thing is a given about Dave Shoji’s retirement plans.

He has said, heading into his 40th season at Hawaii, that he won’t be around for his 50th.

He will be the Rainbow Wahine coach for as long as he finds it enjoyable and challenging. He loves teaching young people, something he expected would be his career track as an educator at some level prior to his taking over the Rainbow Wahine program in 1975.

Shoji has stayed relevant in the sport and with his players, continually adapting to both. That includes allowing music in the practice gym for the first time in 40 years and accepting — not completely approving — the Wahine’s song choices.

This could be one of his more challenging seasons. The Wahine lost quite a bit of experience from 2013. But what Hawaii has gained is overall athleticism and a somewhat more aggressive approach on offense.

As Shoji said, he might not be coaching more with so many new players this season, but he is coaching harder. He wants his players to succeed individually and as a team.

A fifth national title in 2014? Unlikely. Another NCAA tournament appearance. Probable.

Just how far Hawaii gets in the tournament will depend on a number of factors, many that are out of the Wahine’s control. The odds seem stacked against them, regardless of record: the way the selection process favors the power conferences, the RPI and seeding that rarely makes sense, the bracketing.

All will dictate Hawaii’s postseason fate. This team should surprise people, and not in the way that last year’s did by being swept out of the NCAA tournament in the second round — at home — by BYU.

FERD LEWIS
Star-Advertiser sports columnist

If this were a movie, then the fitting finish would be Dave Shoji hoisting a fifth national championship banner at the NCAA final four in Oklahoma City in December.

But even 40 years of pioneering work and standing as the all-time winningest coach doesn’t assure a Hollywood ending to a remarkable career.

This Rainbow Wahine team — and its coach — will have to work for everything it gets in what is likely his aloha season.

If Nikki Taylor’s right (hitting) elbow doesn’t make it back to full strength, UH will be hard-pressed to win the Big West Conference and its 20th consecutive league title.

Even with Taylor, the Rainbow Wahine will need a lot of new, young players to come around for UH to get beyond the first round of the NCAA tournament.

DAVE REARDON
Star-Advertiser sports columnist

Asked and unanswered.

It’s like changing the clock, a biannual ritual. We ask Dave Shoji before the season and again at the end of it if he’s going to retire. In the politest of terms he tells us it’s a fair question but that he is undecided.

I was told last year that he promised Nikki Taylor, now a sophomore, that he’d stay through her UH career. But that’s third-hand, and even Honest Dave can’t be held to everything he might have said while recruiting.

Remember those Magic 8 Balls? I’ve been asking mine all day about Shoji’s future. I keep getting "Reply hazy, try again," "Ask again later," "Better not tell you now," "Concentrate and ask again."

You want to know if Dave Shoji’s retiring from coaching, perhaps to work in the UH administration as he and athletic director Ben Jay have talked about?

Keep your eye on his Twitter feed. That’s how he announced that he’d be back for this year.

As for how the Rainbow Wahine fare on the court this year, all I know is they will finish better than 2013 when they were swept by BYU on their home court in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

MIKE CHERRY
Hawaii News Now sports anchor

This is a question I believe no one, not even Dave Shoji, knows the answer to, not yet anyway. Players we spoke to are split. Some say they’re treating this as his last hurrah; others feel there is plenty of gas left in the tank. Navigating that fork in the road could be dictated by the success, or lack thereof, of the Wahine this season. An NCAA appearance is likely. But a deep postseason run hasn’t happened since UH went to the NCAA semis in 2009. Should the Wahine duplicate or exceed that sort of success, I think it’s foreseeable that Shoji returns for his 41st season. Anything less and the passing of the torch might be inevitable.