The tab on bonuses from the University of Hawaii’s milestone NCAA basketball tournament runs by its women’s and men’s teams could amount to a record $80,000 — or more.
It is the first time since the 1993-94 season that both the Rainbow Wahine and Rainbow Warriors participated in the tournament in the same season, and their coaches reached several “performance incentives” along the way.
Under terms of their contracts, men’s basketball coach Eran Ganot would receive $50,000, while Rainbow Wahine coach Laura Beeman $31,500-$34,000 in incentives.
Both figures could climb depending on academic provisions that will be assessed at the end of the school year.
According to the incentive schedule in his 2015 contract, Ganot is due $25,000 for the Big West Conference regular-season championship, $15,000 for reaching the NCAA Tournament and $10,000 for being named the conference coach of the year.
Ganot was a finalist for several national coach of the year awards and had he received one of the six approved ones he would have been due an additional $25,000.
Athletic director David Matlin said the two national honors Ganot did receive — the Joe B. Hall Award that goes to the top first-year coach in Division I and the Red Auerbach College Coach of the Year Award, given to the nation’s top Jewish college coach — did not qualify per terms of the agreement.
Beeman, who returned the Rainbow Wahine to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1997-98, is to receive $14,000 for road victories, $5,000 for a second-place regular-season finish in the Big West and $12,500 for reaching the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Finishing second in Big West coach of the year balloting would bring another $2,500. The conference has declined to say who finished second in the voting to John Margaritis of UC Riverside.
According to the language in their contracts “if any NCAA Level I or II violation is reported in a contract year, the athletic director has the discretion, based upon potential involvement and complicity of the coach, to withhold any performance incentives/supplemental compensation earned in that contract year until such time (as) as a final ruling has been made by the NCAA.”
In the event the program is found to to have committed a Level I or Level II violation the contracts say, “coach will forfeit any performance incentives/supplemental compensation from the contract year in which the NCAA violation was committed.”
Former men’s coach Gib Arnold did not have those provisions in his contract for the 2013-14 season from which victories were vacated due to NCAA violations.
