Ganot update on Bobbitt

Hawaii coach Eran Ganot spoke to the media on Tuesday prior to a scheduled light practice in Klum Gym.

One topic of discussion was the status of point guard Roderick Bobbitt, who did not dress to play in Saturday’s 83-71 win over Hawaii Pacific.

In short, not a whole lot of specifics were given (again) for Bobbitt’s DNP, but the nuts and bolts are that Ganot said “we’re on the same page right now” and that he expects Bobbitt to be ready for the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic.

Here’s a transcript of Bobbitt-themed questions/answers from the media session today:

Q: Roderick, what’s the status on him?
A: In protecting our student athletes, as we always do, he’s in a good place. He’s in a better place. Some of the things, I’m going to protect him on the conversations we’ve had. The season’s a grind, it’s a journey. Obviously we’re still going through a transition of expectations and things like that. We need to continue to be clear, we’ll continue to stay on it. But the challenge of the long grind of the season and the journey is teaching moments. They present opportunities, peaks and valleys that we have to work through together. And the encouraging thing is we’ve had good conversation and we’re working through that. Obviously, some guys, there’s fatigue that sets in. But he’s in a good place. We’re in a good place and it’s the same thing with any of our guys. We continue to work through the challenges together, and there’s going to be some more moving forward, but we’re on the same page right now.

Q: Will he be good to go on Dec. 22 (for the DHC)?
A: I anticipate all our guys will be good to go, and this is why it’s such a key time. Because we’ve had a lot of these nagging deals for a lot of these guys. When you’re talking about 10 days off, and especially during finals, we get to accomplish three good things here. One, health, two, academics, and three, an opportunity to get better in these practices.

Q: On Rod and teaching moments, is that more him making a change or a buy-in to the way you want to run the team?
A: I think it’s with all our guys. I think some of it is, he had some fatigue. And you could tell early on, he was still overcoming, I think he broke a record in the Rainbow for most minutes played. And I think it affected him in some practices and he’s communicated about that. So our deal at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we’re always on the same page. And that we’re communicating, we’re visiting, and that we’re spending time with our guys. So the teaching moment, could be for him, it’s for a lot of our guys. We have a lot of teaching moments. Especially like we’ve said with a new group, a new staff, and a long journey. And those are great opportunities, provided we all want to work through this together. How good we’ll be will be determined by when we have those moments, which we will have — it’s part of the deal. We come together and stay together.

Q: How proud do you feel when you see Rod cheering with the bench guys?
A: Very. You get chills about it, and that’s the way it should be. That’s when your team comes together. And sometimes what’s great about it is, you want them to have, ‘it’s our team,’ it’s not any person imposing their will on (the others), their style or the way they want to do things. Sometimes there are things that come out … because we want the players to be who they are. Because we’ll be at their best if we find a balance between who they are and having fun and still being professional. You gotta have fun. You gotta enjoy this time, especially to be able to play this great game at this great university in this great state. Sometimes it’s funny, you never know. I didn’t know about the ‘Hawaii 5-O’, they came up with that together. I think it’s helped them and it’s encouraging to hear … what fans say, that guys are supporting each other. And that’s a teaching moment for Rod or any of those guys. They did it on their own, and credit them. A lot of times you’ll see guys who play a lot come off the bench and they don’t support the guys who had been supporting them.