At about this time last year they were getting ready to engrave University of Hawaii basketball coach Eran Ganot’s name on the Big West Coach of the Year trophy.

The funny thing is that, to date, he is doing an even better job and could still be left without any hardware to show for it.

What the Rainbow Warriors’ head coach does have entering the final two games of the regular season is a team in third place with an outside shot at finishing second in the standings.

That’s a significant accomplishment for a team whose roster overhaul was so thorough, so transformational that the ’Bows were predicted to finish eighth in the nine-member conference. Two days after that forecast was posted, the NCAA announced it was sending the appeal of sanctions, including the postseason ban, back to the Committee on Infractions, adding a layer of gnawing uncertainty that hangs over the program to this day.

Yet, here the ’Bows are at 14-13 (8-6 in the Big West) and Ganot’s name is in the conversation for a repeat as fellow coaches prepare to begin their balloting for all-conference awards.

Ballots are due Sunday morning (Hawaii time) and by then UH will have wound up its regular season with games against conference co-leader UC Davis (18-11, 10-4) and preseason conference favorite Long Beach State (13-18, 8-7).

UC Davis’ Jim Les, whose team was picked fifth, is the current favorite for coach of the year. UC Irvine’s Russell Turner is poised to grab the honors should the Anteaters (17-13, 10-4), who were picked second, win out and others falter.

That Ganot would even be in the discussion at all at this point seemed about as remote eight weeks ago as, well, Noah Allen being up for Player of the Year.

Allen, you might recall, was in the midst of a scoring funk at the time, having managed just two points, total, through the team’s first two conference games and didn’t start any of the first three.

But he’s carrying the team as well as a 15.4 scoring average and 5.8 rebounds per game. Along with Davis’ Chima Moneke (15.0 points, 9.1 rebounds) and Irvine’s Luke Nelson (15.9 points), they figure to lead the discussion for Player of the Year into the home stretch.

Allen is the most visible and valuable, but by no means only, factor in the ’Bows’ turnaround, for which their coach deserves considerable credit. You have to appreciate how Ganot has managed to keep his team focused, on an even keel and in position to win the close ones.

Through the initial blowout by Irvine, some exhilarating last-second victories and the head-shaking loss at UC Santa Barbara, the ’Bows have never let success or disappointment untether the emotions to their detriment.

There was an element of beginner’s luck to Ganot’s positioning for the award last year when you consider the array of talent he inherited. Still, a key contribution on his part was keeping the many disparate personalities pointed in the right direction. No small task for a rookie head coach.

This year, with a team of less firepower but largely of his own assembly, Ganot has shown the ability to mix and match. All the while, the ’Bows have demonstrated improvement as evidenced by six victories in their past eight games.

The Big West isn’t exactly Murderer’s Row (ranking 28th out of 32 conferences in RPI and its champion a candidate for an NCAA play-in game). But Ganot has the ’Bows situated to thrive instead of being among the roadkill.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.