After being a student at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a small, private engineering-based NAIA school in Terre Haute, Ind., Fujio “Fudge” Matsuda said he had a “naive, very idealistic view of college sports.”

But that naivete quickly vanished when Matsuda became the University of Hawaii president and rolled up his sleeves, eventually overseeing a recovery from the most tumultuous period in its athletic history and its rise to full Division I and Western Athletic Conference membership.

The 1974-84 presidency of Matsuda, who died Sunday at age 95, thrust him into a period of the rising emergence of UH athletics and all that came with it.

Matsuda worked in his family’s saimin shop, graduated from McKinley High and was a veteran of the 442 Regimental Combat Team’s 232nd Combat Engineer Company. He served as a professor of engineering and director of the state Department of Transportation before being named first Asian-American president of a major university in the country.

The job, including the athletics aspect of it, would require every ounce of his gentlemanly geniality and principled leadership.

Just two years earlier, the Fabulous Five had concluded their remarkable basketball run, filling the then-Honolulu International Center and aspirations for UH sports rose across the board as Aloha Stadium prepared to open.

A community that once had focused on high school sports quickly jumped on the UH bandwagon. But along with the interest came some of the ills of major college athletics, including heavy booster involvement, political intrigue and a demand for winning programs.

Meanwhile what became known as “NCAA Case No. 560 (the) University of Hawaii” was brewing and would result in allegations of 68 violations of NCAA rules by UH coaches, players and boosters dating from 1971. UH was slapped with a two-year probation in basketball that would impact the program long after the sentence ended.

It would be left to Matsuda to select and convene an impartial investigatory panel to sort through the mess, oversee the hiring of a new athletic director (Ray Nagel) to straighten the ship and then press on with the late Gov. John Burns’ avowed wish of securing a conference home for the state’s only intercollegiate athletic program.

When it came time to find a replacement for basketball coach Bruce O’Neil, who had been forced out amid the scandal, Matsuda was surprised to suddenly find O’Neil’s 23-year-old assistant, Rick Pitino, in his Bachman Hall office while O’Neil’s chair was still warm and the NCAA investigation heating up.

“He was a young kid, then, very bright, as I recall,” Matsuda said later. “Kind of brash. He wanted that job. He would have taken it had it been offered, scandal or not. That’s the impression he gave me, that he really wanted the job. He had a lot of guts.”

Pitino would eventually be named in eight of the allegations, which he denied but was never absolved of.

Until everything played out, Matsuda said, “I told him we had a process going, so let the process run through. I was not going to step in to make an appointment or even make a recommendation.”

Years later, after seeing Pitino on TV win a national championship, Matsuda asked an interviewer, “Do you think I made the right call?”

When it came to UH athletics, he usually did.

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