Wallace isn't going anywhere
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer
Riley Wallace to coach the University of Tulsa? Our Riley? The Red Head to the land beyond the Red River?
Relax, University of Hawai'i men's basketball fans. It isn't gonna happen. Sorry, Jerry Tarkanian, he is still going to be here waiting, your worst nightmare (next to that Fresno grand jury, of course).
Wallace isn't leaving coat-tossing range of the Stan Sheriff Center anytime soon. It makes a delicious rumor and interesting headline in a slow sports cycle. It is less dire than speculating about what a prolonged strike might do to UH.
But this is one long shot that isn't going to connect.
This is more about what is going on behind the scenes at UH than in Oklahoma. It is about the spats that happen in a nearly 20-year marriage — 14 of them with him as head coach — that has been Wallace and the current UH administration.
It is about a 59-year old coach, in his moment of triumph, looking at a paycheck of $108,000 base and $170,000 total, that likely ranks in the bottom half of the Western Athletic Conference along with the recruiting budget, and wondering out loud what else might be out there. It is also about an administration apparently trying to get his attention on some in-house issues by dragging its feet before it dishes out the reward.
Though if you're Tulsa, there are several reasons you could do worse than Wallace when it comes to replacing Buzz Peterson, who fled to Tennessee. Not the least of them being what Wallace's team did in the Reynolds Center last month and in the championship game of the WAC Tournament. A parting ovation from the partisan crowd was fitting testament to the remarkable effort.
After four coaches in eight years — the most recent one for a mere nine months — Tulsa, aka Steppingstone Tech, could use the kind of continuity that Wallace would provide. It could use somebody with in-state experience (three years at Seminole State) who can find the on-ramps to the Broken Arrow Expressway.
And, in case you missed the Charlie Spoonhour hiring at Nevada-Las Vegas, AARP membership is no hurdle for a visible job these days.
If Tulsa, with its considerable resources — the payday could be upwards of $500,000 — targeted Wallace, it could have had him before Peterson's U-Haul hit the Arkansas stateline.
Instead Tulsa is under pressure from boosters to land a "name" coach or, failing that, somebody tied to the program.
As for UH, as the late Stan Sheriff wisely recognized after Frank Arnold's misadventure, this job isn't for everybody. Unique limitations come with its geographic separation that not a lot of coaches can deal with or even comprehend.
The fact is, though they often have issues with each other, Wallace and Hugh Yoshida are usually fortunate to have one another. Even if, in periods like this, they don't always seem to recognize it.
