BasketBows to head Down Under, too

Hawaii’s football team isn’t the only Manoa sport preparing to take a visit Down Under.

The details are very much in the infant stages, but Eran Ganot’s basketball Rainbow Warriors are planning an international tour to Australia, and maybe New Zealand as well, either in the summer of 2016 or 2017. The UH football team is opening its 2016 season against Cal in Sydney on Aug. 27.

Teams can do a foreign tour and play pro teams in exhibitions on their home soil once every four years. UH went to China and Japan under Gib Arnold in the summer of 2011, so it is able to take a visit this coming summer if things work out on UH’s end.

However, my guess would be 2017 at this point, if only because there won’t be as much player stability between seasons as there was last year to this year. UH will be losing its starting backcourt, at the least.

Ganot was confident that he could fundraise for the considerable trip expenses. He said the team would ideally play teams in four or five stops across Australia and perhaps in New Zealand as well.

Whereas the China trip had dubious long-term merit for UH — there’s not going to be a pipeline of players from Yao Ming Country to Manoa anytime soon — some added visibility in Australia could pay major dividends for the Bows. As you’ve seen, Ganot’s regime has already made an emphasis bringing in Aussies.

Besides current Bows Jack Purchase and Jakob Cornelissen, you’ve got point guard Matt Owies signed for next season as well.

There’d been rumors of this trip being in the works for a while, but it’s sounding enough like a certainty that I’m comfortable putting it out there.

It’s going to be a matter of when, Ganot said — not if.