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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, June 6, 2002

UH acknowledges program's success

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist

Three months since his team hoisted the Western Athletic Conference championship trophy and five months before it plays another game, University of Hawai'i men's basketball coach Riley Wallace is staring at a milestone of sorts.

Wallace stands to be, on base salary, the highest-paid men's basketball coach in the WAC. The first time any UH basketball coach would be able to say that in 23 years of conference membership.

In its own way, Wallace's new three-year contract (worth between $200,000 and $250,000 with incentives, and based on what is believed to be approximately $180,000 in guaranteed base salary) is a significant development at UH. Even if in the overall accounting with incentives some WAC coaches might end up making more.

This latest contract, on the heels of back-to-back WAC Tournament titles and NCAA Tournament appearances, is as much a well-deserved lifetime achievement award for the school's winningest coach (243-205) as a contract. And, at age 60, it might turn out to be Wallace's last in UH's employ.

The numbers say something both about the man who, 15 seasons into his tenure as UH head coach, is the dean of WAC coaches and how his program, one he inherited still in the shadow of NCAA probation, is now regarded.

Of course, being at the top of the 10-school WAC food chain doesn't put you within 3-point shooting distance of Bill Gates. The next WAC basketball coach who retires and buys his own island in the Pacific will be the first.

Heck, Rick Pitino at Louisville will pay more in taxes than Wallace will make in a banner year. And, football coach June Jones will be the chief bread winner on staff as long as he's at UH.

But in Manoa, where basketball has often been something of the poor cousin come payday, Wallace's contract is noteworthy. UH has, at times, led the WAC in the way it has paid its football coach, its women's volleyball coach, its baseball coach and its defensive coordinators. But never has it come close with its men's basketball coach.

Not until he got last season's raise to $120,000 did Wallace even manage to crack the top half of the conference salary scale. It took that raise to boost him past what some assistants in football had made at the school and what some rookie head basketball coaches were earning in the conference.

Part of it is that, since the Fabulous Five of the 1970s, few UH basketball teams have been good enough or exciting enough to command a sizable following. Rarely has UH strung sellouts together and never has it led the WAC in basketball attendance.

When Stan Sheriff, the late UH athletic director, attempted to create a competitive contract to entice more than a minimum-level candidate into becoming Larry Little's successor in 1985, well-heeled boosters told him not to waste his time. UH, some told him, would never be able to be very competitive on the contract front, even in the WAC.

Paying the freight on this one won't be easy and how UH will go about it remains to be seen. But it has become a mark of where Wallace has brought the program that UH is now willing to make the effort to be the best in the WAC.