After being moved from its traditional Christmas Week slot to Thanksgiving Week, the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic has now been put on “pause” altogether.
The official tournament Web site showed a notice on its home page reading: “The Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic has been paused for 2025. Please stay tuned for announcements regarding the tournament. We appreciate our many partners and fans who have supported us through the years and look forward to future opportunities.”
Hawai’i head coach Eran Ganot said while the news is disappointing, it is just the latest in the turbulent world of NCAA basketball.
“It’s tough, your head is on a swivel, (with) the landscape of college athletics these days,” Ganot said. “The partnership has been really strong, it’s been like a family with ESPN (Events), a lot of familiar members there and here over the years we’ve been hosting.”
Ganot added that the “pause” does not mean the eight-team tournament — a Christmas Week tradition since 2010 — is gone forever.
“The communication is that they’re working hard to have it return in the future,” Ganot said. “Like everybody in scheduling right now, they’re trying to navigate how to move everything — single games, tournaments, conference play … it’s all part of the equation. There have been a lot of changes recently, and there is going to continue to be a lot of changes as people figure it out.
“But I’m very appreciative of them. It’s going to be interesting, and right now right away we are shifting gears to how we can create a new template for how the new schedule will work in ’25-’26 without a Diamond Head. We have work to do, because we lost a window and we have games to fill. But like anything, we’ll take on the challenge and compete.”