Big West rumblings
Aside from Gib Arnold’s brief line in today’s newspaper — “I’m excited for the football team. We will wait and see what the next move is for the other sports” — the Hawaii basketball coach wanted to withhold comment on a potential switch to the Big West Conference until something official is announced.
The Big West, with all of its schools currently located in California, isn’t known as a power hoops conference. It’s best team in recent years has been Pacific, though UC Santa Barbara was the team to emerge from the Big West tournament last year and make the NCAAs.
It would, however, make travel much, much easier than in the spread-out WAC, which is adding two teams from Texas — Texas State and Texas-San Antonio. Getting to Louisiana Tech was tough enough already.
The Rainbows’ recent opponents in the ESPN BracketBusters annual game have been from the Big West: Cal Poly, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and Long Beach State.
UH is set to tip off against Central Arkansas following the Hawaii-Cal State Northridge women’s basketball game.
Former Hawaii point guard Mark Campbell is here in Hawaii for the Wahine Jack in the Box Classic tournament. Campbell, formerly an assistant coach for the Saint Mary’s men’s team, is an assistant with the Oregon State women’s team. Oregon State defeated Eastern Michigan to open the Wahine tournament.
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Another note about the Wahine, who defeated Cal State Northridge 66-58 in their season opener:
Junior point guard Keianna (Keke) Evans has left the team for what coach Dana Takahara-Dias said were “personal reasons.”
Evans appeared in spot duty off the bench in both of UH’s exhibition wins.
Evans, a junior college transfer and native of Fayetteville, N.C., was playing behind seniors Keisha Kanekoa and Mai Ayabe at the point. She was one of four new players to the Wahine roster this season.
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Here’s an update on former UH coach Bob Nash, who coaches the Saitama Broncos in Japan’s bj league, courtesy of the Japan Times newspaper. Scroll down a little to see it.
I think it would be a step down in competition if we go Big West for Basketball. We would probably be the big dog in that conference but it could also help in recruiting Cali since we’d be playing almost all our conference games in Cali. Regardless UH just needs to get out of the WAC period. The ship is sinking and sinking fast and I hope JD doesn’t allow UH’s foot to get caught on that anchor of the sinking WAC ship.
Anyway, nice to see our basketball team at 4-0 to start the season. I think they will do some damage this year although they really haven’t been tested by a solid team yet. Regardless they are learning and growing and I like how the young guys are getting some PT in as well. Bo Barnes is frikkin ridiculous out in three point land, and I’m glad Zane Johnson is starting to find his stroke too. I like how the team is balanced and anyone on any given night can fill up buckets. Teams will have headaches trying to focus on just Bill Amis, or Joston Thomas, or Bo Barnes, or Hiram Thompson, or Zane Johnson, I mean these guys can all go off if need be. I wish though that our bigs start being more offensive minded when they get the ball down low. Vander shows flashes here and there but Kurtz needs to go to Big Man Camp or something. He’s so much bigger than everybody yet doesn’t use his height or leverage to get in the paint and get buckets. So many times down low I would like to see him just drop stop step and power up to the rim. Oh well he still got time to work on it I guess.
Glad Coach Nash is still coaching. I saw him and Bobby at the airport recently and had a chat with both. Bobby was saying he’s still ballin in Japan too since he graduated from UH. Anyway, I wish Coach Nash success but I’m glad that Coach Gib has given some new life to our Warrior Basketball program. I like Coach Nash but honestly I don’t think he could’ve pulled the kind of talent Coach Gib has recruited to the team. Although tonight one of his recruits Jordan Coleman looked really good.
Nash’s team in Japan is not doing so well, about a week or so ago they were 2-6
Thanks for the update on Evans of the Wahine team, Brian. Was wondering why she didn’t get into the game, even with the large lead late in the game. Then, when she didn’t join her teammates in the postgame handshake with Northridge, I figured something was up.
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