It wasn’t easy to follow University of Hawaii at Hilo men’s basketball coaching legend Jimmy Yagi, but Bob Wilson had his share of highlights, making his biggest impact off the court.
It wasn’t easy to follow University of Hawaii at Hilo men’s basketball coaching legend Jimmy Yagi, but Bob Wilson had his share of highlights, making his biggest impact off the court.
Wilson took over for Yagi in 1985, and coached the Vulcans for 10 seasons, qualifying for the postseason eight straight years.
The only exceptions were his first year when the Vulcans went 12-16 in the NAIA, and his last in 1994 with a 10-17 record, the school’s first season on the NCAA Division II level.
After that season, Wilson became the athletic director at Vanguard University, an NAIA school in Southern California, where he also coached.
He recently announced his retirement, ending a 20-year career of leading the Lions, who won two national championships, and 26 conference titles in seven different sports.
Wilson holds the distinction of taking three schools to four NAIA national tournaments, with UHH’s quarterfinal berth in 1986 during a 25-10 season as the highest finish.
Before he arrived on the Big Island, Wilson coached at Phillips (Okla.) University. He finished with a 385-357 overall record over 24 years, including a 153-137 mark at UHH.
Wilson had a tough act to follow because he joined UHH after the school’s golden age that featured not just Yagi during the “Vulcan Fever” heyday, but Sharon Peterson, the volleyball coach with seven national titles. (Wilson and Peterson are both in the NAIA Hall of Fame.)
In his nine years, Yagi never had a losing record, and took the Vulcans to the NAIA championships three times, and played before packed houses at Hilo Civic.
In 1992 former UHH athletic director Bill Trumbo spearheaded the Big Island Basketball Tournament, a copy of the Maui Invitational — one host Division II school and a bunch of big-name Division I brand names.
Wilson was around for first three editions of the BIIBT, which featured teams such as Ball State, Missouri, Creighton, UConn, and VCU. The tournament, later watered down by NCAA restrictions, died in 2001.
Wilson left his biggest imprint with the Hilo local community, especially all the young hoopsters who attended the Vulcans Hawaii Basketball School, once the most prominent and popular summer camp in the state.
It was started by Yagi in 1979 and held annually at the UHH Gym, but was last run by the school in 2012. The Jimmy Yagi Summer Hoops camp started in 2013, and is run by the county, and held at Panaewa Gym and Hilo Civic.
For years, Wilson brought in mainland coaches as guest clinicians, including longtime friends Dan Hays from Oklahoma Christian College, and Fred Litzenberger, from the University of Miami.
A lot of the BIIF’s best basketball players back in the day grew up going to the Vulcans camp every summer, a major reason Hilo won boys HHSAA state titles in 1991 and 2000.
Vanguard president Micahel Beals best summed up what Wilson meant to his school in a press release.
“Bob Wilson is a champion of character,” he said. “His enduring legacy has been forged in the hearts and lives of the student-athletes who pursued integrity and competitive excellence and achieved both.”
Though Beals was talking about his Lions, that statement applied to the Big Island campers who grew up at the Vulcans School, too.