The last time the University of Hawaii went about rewarding a rookie men’s basketball coach it ended up shattering the athletic department piggy bank.
The coach was Gib Arnold and what started out as the promise of a “modest bump” in pay turned into a $104,000 raise to a school-record $344,000 basketball salary by the time papers were signed.
And Arnold won “only” 19 games that inaugural 2010-11 (19-13) season.
So it will be interesting to see how deep in its lint-lined pockets UH reaches in the coming weeks to reward Eran Ganot, who presided over the winningest season (28-6) in school history, and how much fiscal sanity reigns.
Ganot had a base salary of $225,000 for 2015-16 and, under the terms of his contract, was due a $7,500 raise next week whether the Rainbow Warriors made the postseason or not.
But coming off the team’s first NCAA Tournament victory and a handful of coaching awards, the numbers will undoubtedly go higher than the contracted $232,500.
Just how much is the question for a department that is projected to operate at more than a $4.5 million deficit when the books close on the current fiscal year June 30.
“We obviously have some fiscal constraints, but at the end of the day the goal is we want Eran here and I think he wants to be here, so we’re looking at making that happen,” athletic director David Matlin said.
Meanwhile, UH’s first-round NCAA Tournament victory over Cal assures the athletic department of a check worth upwards of $132,500 annually from 2017 to 2022, which also figures into the conversation.
“Hopefully we will have some in-person discussion in the next few weeks, if not sooner,” Matlin said. “Eran and I always talk, but then there is (his) agent and then there is the union (HGEA). It is kind of a three-party deal.”
Ganot ranked 62nd in salary among the 68 coaches who had teams in this NCAA Tournament, according to a USA Today survey. Among the three rookie head coaches in the field he was in the middle — ahead of Tennessee-Chattanooga’s Matt McCall ($220,000) and trailing Buffalo’s Nate Oats ($250,000) in base salary.
In the nine-member Big West, Ganot ranked seventh in base salary, with all those above him having been to at least one NCAA Tournament and having at least five years head coaching experience.
Just as Arnold won his rookie year largely with Bob Nash’s players, Ganot benefited from the cupboards that Gib had stocked.
Arnold exited as the conference’s highest-paid coach, thanks to a confluence of missteps that the school is still paying for. Basically it lollygagged on the terms to the point that regents and boosters waded in and perspective was lost.
Part of the deal, what UH termed an “overload” of $50,000, was to have been anted up annually by boosters. But UH officials said after the first year of the plan not enough donors followed through on their pledges and the athletic department had to pick up $15,000 and, then, eventually all $50,000.
Now we see what lessons have been learned from the last go-around.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
