Former University of Hawaii men’s basketball coach Gib Arnold “can live with” the sanctions meted out Tuesday by the NCAA Committee on Infractions, his attorney said.

“We’d like to see no sanctions at all (against Arnold), but I think (under) the circumstances that is a result Gib can live with,” Honolulu attorney James Bickerton said.

Arnold, who was fired by UH on Oct. 28 without cause amid an NCAA investigation, will be suspended from 30 percent of the regular-season games in his first season with a new NCAA-member school and subject to a three-year show-cause order, the NCAA panel said.

The NCAA said it centered on Arnold “permitting and instructing his director of operations to participate in coaching activities, failing to report a possible extra benefits violation and providing false or misleading information in his statements during the investigation.”

But allegations of three Level I violations by the NCAA enforcement staff, the most severe of four categories, were downgraded to Level II by the COI.

“Gib is very pleased. He always knew that the program faced some violations findings, but he was adamant that he had not made any Level I violations, and now he has been vindicated,” Bickerton said.

Bickerton said, “Basically what they found is that there were violations, but the lack of action by the compliance office put the team in a difficult spot and put Coach Arnold in a tough situation that led to the violations piling up. That, I think, is mitigating to him, and the panel understood that.”

Bickerton said, “It is important to realize that we got no help at all from the university, which actually pleaded guilty to Level I. I think if the university had simply stood shoulder to shoulder with us and done some investigation that we could have done even better than we did.

“I think with the institution basically laying down on the charges, it made it harder for us to defeat them. But we were still able to defeat the Level I charges. We could have done better with their help.”