New University of Hawai'i athletic director Jim Donovan likes to say he sees opportunity in the emptiness of the Stan Sheriff Center.

If that is the case, there is a mounting abundance of it staring back from the declining revenue of UH basketball.

Ticket revenue for the Rainbow Warriors slid to at least a five-year low ($1,112,057) this season and the second lowest in five years ($31,968) for the Rainbow Wahine, according to UH figures.

Together, their struggles help underline the depth of the battle Donovan wades into next week when he officially moves into the AD's office.

To balance the budget in the coming fiscal year, much less make a significant dent in the unrestricted net deficit of more than $4 million, UH is going to need more from its basketball programs.

This at a point where both of them embark upon considerable rebuilding jobs. The men lose seven seniors, the women five.

Men's basketball, the No. 2 money-maker on most Division I-A campuses, has been a laggard at UH, where it lost $660,867 for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007, according to the auditor's report, and could go beyond that for the current fiscal year that concludes June 30, 2008.

Women's basketball will likely never make money at Manoa. What UH has to hope is that it can get to a point where it is losing considerably less than the $785,117 it went in the red on for the most recently completed fiscal year, according to the auditor's report.

It would be hard to blame first-year men's head coach Bob Nash, who got the job barely 11 months ago. His appointment and that of Larry Farmer, a leading assistant, came after national letter of intent day, dooming their immediate chances of adding much in the way of starters or even significant depth.

Indeed, through the first round of the Western Athletic Conference season, Nash was a contender for coach of the year until depth caught up with UH in the form of a season-ending seven-game tailspin and 11-19 finish. Less easy to explain was the Rainbow Wahine's 12-18 finish.

Winning would undoubtedly help both bottom lines. To be sure, both teams' sales suffered in the considerable shadow of football's march to the Sugar Bowl. But there's more to it than that.

This is where Donovan's contention that the "most easily attainable revenue we have right now is in unsold seats" will be put to the test and the degree of that attainability challenged.

That he has correctly pin-pointed ticket prices as an area for review is a promising first step. "We have to go back and take a hard look at why people were customers before and why they left," Donovan said. "And, what we can do to get them back."

Therein looms one of the earliest and most formidable challenges confronting the new AD.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.