By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

University of Hawai'i men's basketball coach Riley Wallace has spent most of the past week in Las Vegas but, truth be told, the jackpot he seeks resides right here in Honolulu.

If Wallace could speak of the Rainbows Warriors' Most Wanted Recruit — and the NCAA manual slaps a forbidding muzzle on such talk — it would be Iolani School's Derrick Low he'd publicly covet with exclamation points.

Low, a 6-foot-1 point guard, is still a junior but as the Rainbows wind up recruiting for next season, preparing to award their final scholarship for 2003-04, it definitely isn't too early to talk about what he would mean for UH.

Since he scored 33 points in the state championship game as a sophomore, Low's choice of colleges has made for juicy speculation. And, the way the recruiting calendar runs, we're already heading into the stretch run for the 2004-05 freshmen class. A lot of the top high school juniors will be making commitments around their showings in this summer's camps and tournaments and then putting it into writing come November.

For a while now it has been apparent that Low is that once-in-a-blue moon player UH has only dared dream of. For a lot of other brand-name schools who have come to follow and contact him — Kansas prominent among them — Low is a potential piece to their puzzle, a promising point guard who can make others around him even better.

But for UH, he is all that and more. He is the type of player the Rainbows have always coveted but never seen emerge in their own backyard, a potential franchise talent and local box office lure.

For all that other recent homegrown starters, Jarinn Akana, Kalia McGee and Alika Smith, have meant to UH, it is not lost on the Rainbows that Low could set the bar even higher as a four-year lineup fixture. Word around Iolani is that the Rainbows, whose games and practices he has attended over the years, have promised Low there will be a scholarship — and a position — with his name on it the moment he is allowed to sign.

Off three consecutive post-season appearances — bet on four if Carl English returns — the Rainbows would seem to have something to sell.

Coupled with the potential of Bobby Nash and Ikaika Alama-Francis, Low's arrival could make for some interesting times in Manoa.

It is a sign of Low's importance to UH that Wallace has reportedly decreed that he will be the point man on this recruit. While Jackson Wheeler scours the Mainland for recruits, Wallace is calling his own number on this one.

When it comes to Low, there should be no limit to how high the Rainbows will go to secure their future.