Hawaii athletic director Jim Donovan delegated chair duties when putting together two coaching searches last year.

With one of the department's most visible positions now open, Donovan is taking the lead himself.

In the wake of the announcement that Bob Nash would not be retained as head coach of the UH men's basketball team, Donovan said he will put together an advisory committee to screen candidates, but will personally lead the search, and the ultimate decision on Nash's successor will rest with him.

“;I'm going to run the search process myself directly. That would be one thing different in this case,”; Donovan said in comparing the upcoming task to last year's searches that resulted in Dana Takahara-Dias being named women's basketball coach and Charlie Wade being hired as men's volleyball coach.

Timeliness will be among Donovan's chief concerns as he tries to avoid a repeat of the drawn-out process in 2007 that ended with Nash being hired well after the signing period for basketball recruits had begun.

In filling two head coaching posts last year, Donovan assigned associate athletic director Marilyn Moniz-Kahoohanohano to head the search committee for women's basketball and former UH athletic director Hugh Yoshida led the men's volleyball committee.

The committees submitted recommendations to Donovan, who then had final approval of the hires.

“;It always helps to have other people looking at it to make sure it's a fair process,”; Donovan said. “;When you just have one person doing it by themselves, there's the potential to be accused that it wasn't a fair process. That's one of the strong points of having a committee. The other is you get key people in town that can end up supporting whoever the new coach is and buy into it because they were part of the process.

“;It worked very well for us with both women's basketball and men's volleyball.”;

The pay range for men's basketball head coach, as set by the UH Board of Regents, is $185,000-400,000.

Nash originally signed a three-year contract when he was hired in 2007, with a rollover option after each year. An amended contract, which included a clause activating an extension for reaching 18 wins or a postseason tournament, went into effect on May 1, 2009, and was to pay him $240,000 annually until it expired on April 30, 2011.

If UH bumps up the new coach's pay outside the range, a measure approved by the Board of Regents at last month's meeting could come into play.

The measure applies to coaches with contracts of more than $500,000 or three years and calls for the hire to be approved by the BOR chair and vice chair.

“;There may be a couple or handful of head coaches that might take a look at it and certainly I would think there would be a plethora of assistant coaches that would see this as a great opportunity to be their first head job,”; Donovan said. “;I think we'll have a lot of interest.”;