Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
It would be one thing if Jim Bolla, out of coaching since 1996, had been hired as the women's head basketball coach at some out-of-the-way school that competes in a lesser conference. After all, his credentials will always make him attractive to a struggling or fledgling program, no matter how dated his accolades.
Yet to be selected to succeed Vince Goo as head coach at the University of Hawaii of the Western Athletic Conference took even Bolla by pleasant surprise. The Rainbow has taken three trips to the Women's National Invitation Tournament in the past four years and Goo's 17 years at the helm were marked by consistently high performances.
It's a step up for Bolla, who coached the UNLV Lady Rebels to 300 victories between 1982 and '96 before taking a fund-raising position with the university and, later, entering private business as the director of the BBQ Oasis in North Las Vegas.
"I called in a lot of favors for this," Bolla said Monday, back in Las Vegas for a day before starting a recruiting trip to Southern California. "I'm very thankful for (Hawaii athletic director) Herman Frazier taking this risk on me."
Bolla, 52, was officially appointed Goo's successor after his hiring was approved by Hawaii's board of regents Friday. Bolla expects to make an immediate, and favorable, impression.
"It won't be long before I can walk in a gym and people will know I'm the guy from Hawaii," he said. "I'll get up to speed pretty fast."
He said a priority is hiring two assistant coaches to fill in the gaps that exist in his recent coaching experience. Those assistants will be knowledgeable about current high-school players and coaches that Hawaii may want to contact.
"If there's anything that's against me right this minute, that's it," Bolla said of being somewhat out of touch with who's who in the high school ranks. "But that's why you hire assistant coaches."
Beyond soliciting support from his friends in athletics, Bolla was drawn to the Hawaii job by his rapport with Frazier.
"I've worked under six athletic directors and I've seen a couple of others up close, too," Bolla said. "I know a good one from a bad one and he's a guy with a vision for the Hawaii program that's the same as mine.
"Through my talks with him and the research I did, I came to realize he's going to give me the tools I need to win."
He said the Hawaii opening was the second coaching job he had applied for this year and that he knew a return to the sport was inevitable.
"I always knew I'd get back in it, but I really didn't start looking seriously at anything until the last two years," he said. "It was a matter of time and seeing what athletic director would take a shot at me."
Despite his years away from the sport, Bolla retained his contacts between jobs.
"One of the big questions at the (announcement) press conference was whether I'd been away too long," he said. "But I never saw that as a problem. I'd stayed in touch with other coaches, and even though I wasn't officially involved in coaching I was still around it."
His friends encouraged him to get back into basketball, as well.
"I always said I wanted to do it but I was waiting for the right situation," he said. "Close friends would say, 'You really need to get back into it.' But it always takes a little time and even then you never know until you look closer whether a job is really open or not."
The Hawaii job was legitimately open in that it hadn't been promised to a Hawaii assistant or wasn't privately earmarked for a woman, and Bolla made the right contacts and became one of 91 applicants for the position. That field was whittled to five and Bolla was offered the job in late June, pending his acceptance and the regents' approval.
"It is pretty neat," he said of taking over an established program in a good women's basketball league. "Even I thought the best I might be able to hope for was a mid-major deal or a school that was trying to start something."
Hawaii is much more than that.
Bolla is back -- and with a level of prominence he has never previously enjoyed.
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