Effective team-building and game execution are important, sure, but endurance as a college basketball coach is as much about the relationships you make along the way<\/p>\n
One of the latter came through for Jeff Harada at a good time.<\/p>\n
Harada, the former Hawaii Pacific and Cal State Fullerton women\u2019s hoops head coach from Oahu, was announced as Long Beach State\u2019s new associate head coach on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He hopes to provide a veteran voice as the right-hand man for first-time program leader Minyon Moore, and get a fresh start in Southern California in the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrateful and just blessed that I can continue coaching,\u201d Harada told Spectrum News in a phone interview Thursday.<\/p>\n
Harada, who was between jobs for a year after parting ways from Fullerton, was first hired by third-year LBSU coach Amy Wright in April. But a few days later, Wright took a job at Alabama as associate head coach, it was announced April 30.<\/p>\n
Moore, a former USC and Oregon standout guard, was announced as Wright\u2019s successor at LBSU on May 19.<\/p>\n
It meant Harada essentially had to interview for the Beach assistant job a second time. But it turned out he had little to worry about.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter meeting Coach Minyon, it was evident how much energy and passion she has for the game and her goals for the program,\u201d Harada said. \u201cI\u2019m definitely grateful and excited to be a part of that, contributing my knowledge and experience in any way I can while also learning new things from her at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t starting from scratch.<\/p>\n
Moore was a notable understudy of Mark Campbell, the former Hawaii standout point guard, at TCU over the last three years as the Horned Frogs made a dramatic turnaround from a Big 12 also-ran into a national title contender.<\/p>\n
Harada and Campbell had an established relationship from their time coaching against each other. Campbell was a star women\u2019s assistant at Oregon, then got his first head job at Sacramento State. Harada\u2019s Titans faced him multiple times, and they kept in touch on the recruiting trail.<\/p>\n
\u201cMark and I know each other pretty well,\u201d Harada said. \u201cHe told me great things about (Moore), and I guess he told her things about me, and so it makes sense \u2014 her being a first-time head coach, and me having experience in the (Big West), and stuff like that. So, I think we can definitely work well together and help each other out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harada parted ways with Cal State Fullerton after eight seasons with the program in 2024-25. While his Titans tenure began in promising fashion \u2014 their 17-14 mark in 2019-20 was the program\u2019s first winning record since 1991 \u2014 the last two years were difficult (10-20 and 7-23).<\/p>\n
Player retention in the age of Name, Image and Likeness opportunities and transfer portal ease for student-athletes proved difficult. Though Harada didn’t voice any specific examples,\u00a0he notably lost starting point guard Lily Wahinekapu to the portal and her hometown program Hawaii after she was Big West Freshman of the Year at CSUF in 2021-22.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last couple years of coaching was pretty tough, portal and NIL, and when you don’t have those resources and lose your best players every year, it got to be pretty frustrating,\u201d Harada said. \u201cIt was nice to kind of just take a break and reset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other opportunities presented themselves last year, he said, but would\u2019ve required an out-of-state move. It was hard to pass up the chance at a 35-to-40-minute commute from home in Anaheim Hills to Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaking a year off really put things in perspective for me, just trying to navigate this landscape \u2026 and what it takes now to kind of be successful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
LBSU went 5-25 (4-16 BWC) last season. Harada anticipates helping the Beach’s offense and recruiting.<\/p>\n
He views the new-look Big West as wide open as the conference loses perennial contenders Hawaii and UC Davis to the Mountain West next season. The BWC will welcome Cal Baptist, Utah Valley and Sacramento State in 2026-27.<\/p>\n
Brian McInnis<\/a> covers the state\u2019s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@<\/a>charter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Effective team-building and game execution are important, sure, but endurance as a college basketball coach is as much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[19375,6632,6631,19376,1815,2289,131,133,132,127,136],"class_list":["post-366741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-app-college-sports","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brian-mcinnis","tag-college","tag-hawaii","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}