If contending for conference championships and getting to the NCAA Tournament are important, it’s time for a head coaching change at the University of Hawaii men’s basketball program. Many fans believe that change is way overdue and have voted with their non-attendance and increasing frustration, or, even worse, disinterest.

If it were not already obvious, it became so when UH lost Saturday, 82-73, at Cal State Northridge, ending the Rainbow Warriors season. They finished with losing records of 15-16 overall and 7-13 in the Big West Conference.

The top eight teams in the conference standings advance to the Big West Tournament this week; UH is ninth. No tournament means no hope. And what is college basketball in March without hope?

Head coach Eran Ganot just completed his 10th season. A cursory look at his record shows it is just his second losing season, and first since 2016-17.

But there is much more to this.

Under Ganot, UH has made it to the NCAA Tournament once. That was his first season, when Hawaii went 28-6 in 2015-16. This team made history by being the first from UH to win a game in the NCAA Tournament.

Ganot gets credit for coaching that team, but not assembling it. That was done by predecessors Gib Arnold and Benjy Taylor, the interim coach after Arnold was fired amid an NCAA investigation.

The Rainbows have not come close to making it to the NCAAs since, with close being defined as getting to the Big West Tournament championship game. Winning the tournament is the only guaranteed way for a Big West school to get there.

Even for teams that barely scrape their way into a conference tournament, early March is a time of hope. Get hot at the right time and perform well enough in a conference tournament and you are in.

UH made it to the NCAAs twice that way when it was in the Western Athletic Conference, with Riley Wallace as coach, in 1994 and 2001.

It was improbable, anyway, for a team that had lost 10 of its last 14 games. But now it is impossible for this year’s ’Bows after Saturday’s loss.

A second Big West team can get an at-large bid, and there is a chance it could happen this year as UC San Diego (35) and UC Irvine (62) are both high in the NET rankings used by the NCAA in selecting at-large tournament teams. But since joining the Big West in 2012, other than in 2016 UH has never had a good enough record to merit such consideration for an at-large bid if it didn’t win the tournament.

This is especially so because teams are evaluated on the quality of their schedules. Hawaii was 20-11 in 2023 against Division I teams and 18-14 last year. Using the NCAA’s NET rankings, UH was 172nd among 362 teams last year, and 127th of 363 in 2023. The top 68 teams make it to the NCAA Tournament.

Convincing teams to play nonconference games at UH is not always easy, but it seems like the ‘Bows schedule opponents by starting from the bottom of the rankings of the weakest conferences and working their way up instead of the other way around.

Granted, North Carolina did play UH at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center this season. The loss didn’t help UH’s record, and since the Tar Heels had an off-season the NET bump wasn’t as much as it could have been.

But marquee opponents that help UH in the attendance department have been too few in recent years. Fans also complain about the ‘Bows’ style of play.

Recruiting always comes into question, especially so when a player like Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones ends up starring at UC San Diego. The native of New Zealand transferred to the Tritons from UH Hilo.

Whether a player was recruited or not is often a he-said, he-said situation, and there’s no guarantee Tait-Jones would have fit in as well at Manoa as he did at Hilo and now at UCSD.

UH acting athletic director Lois Manin and president Wendy Hensel are both in awkward spots.

Ganot has one year left on a contract that pays him $330,000 a year. The normal thing to do if a coach is determined to be doing a good job in such a situation would be extend the contract. But, if that is not the case, he should be let go. No one likes buyouts, but that’s the way it works now in college sports.

Manin has publicly said she will not pursue the permanent AD post. So, if Ganot is relieved of duty the best course might be to name an interim coach so the new athletic director can hire a coach they want.

In many ways, personally I feel the same today about Ganot as I did 15 years ago about the ’Bows men’s basketball head coach at that time.

The best way I can say it is I’d feel very fortunate if I had a kid who was coached by Bob Nash or Eran Ganot. I like and respect them both as people of character. They care about others, nearly to a fault, and both did fine work as assistant coaches at UH.

Nash did not inherit a team with the talent to win or even get to the NCAA Tournament, and was fired after three losing seasons in 2010.

Ganot was the right coach for this program when he was hired in 2015.

Now it is time for a change if contending for conference championships, rebuilding the fan base, and returning to the NCAA Tournament are important.

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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com.