Jacobsen wins another title

Adam Jacobsen may not have played a minute last season, but he was a big part of Hawaii basketball’s success.

When Norm Parrish left after his brief stint in Manoa in the summer of 2015, Jacobsen suddenly became the senior (oldest) member of Eran Ganot’s young staff at 40.

He scouted. He organized the offense. He worked with the point guards, which included a strong personality in Roderick Bobbitt.

UH went through last season and won regular-season and tournament titles without an official right-hand man for Ganot. But it always seemed like a matter of time before Jacobsen, the most experienced coach on staff, would be rewarded for his service and knighted as associate head coach.

That day was Tuesday.

“It’s always nice to be appreciated and have people that can trust you and feel good about the work that you do,” Jacobsen said. “So I appreciate that from Coach Ganot, the athletic department and the university.”

Recent UH hoops associate head coaches include Bob Nash (for Riley Wallace), Jackson Wheeler (for Wallace and Nash), Walter Roese (for Gib Arnold), and Benjy Taylor (for Arnold). There was no associate coach the last two seasons.

Jacobsen knows what it’s like to have that mantle. He was associate at Pacific for the last two of his 14 years on staff with the Tigers, just before he joined UH.

“I think it can (come with more responsibility),” he said. “I think you always want to get better in your progression. For me here, as well as there, when you get into that role you want to do everything you can to make your head coach’s job better. Help him do his job the best that he can, and help others too.”

This season offers a chance for “Coach Jake” to be a mentor to a whole new generation of players, many of whom don’t have any Division I experience to call upon.

“When you have a bunch of new guys, or a bunch of returning guys, every year there’s new dynamics of a group,” Jacobsen said. “That’s one of the parts I really enjoy about coaching, is finding ways to make the whole group click, but also helping individual guys understand their part to helping that program and that team be as successful as they can be every single year. It’s a great challenge that we have right now, but it’s fun every single day to teach and coach and evaluate what we need to do to get better.”

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The Big West preseason polls come out Wednesday morning.

Here’s a spoiler: there won’t be any UH players on the preseason all-conference team … because no players were nominated from UH’s heavily overhauled roster. (That was Ganot’s decision.)

So, basically, it’s all about where the Rainbow Warriors get picked among nine Big West teams as based on media voting.

“I have no idea what to expect, because I don’t really know what Big West basketball competition is like,” forward Gibson Johnson said. “But I hope they got us at ninth, because I know we’re going to surprise some people. And I have no problem being the underdog.”

It was a good practice Tuesday night, perhaps the team’s best yet. Ganot remarked that the energy reminded him of last year.

Sheriff Drammeh, Noah Allen, Johnson and Jack Purchase remained wearing green (first team) jerseys. Matt Owies (to white) and Brocke Stepteau (to green) swapped places from Monday, as did Larry Lewis Jr. (to white) and Leland Green (to green).