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The first two years of Big West baseball haven’t been kind to the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors.
As a result, expectations for year three from around the league aren’t great.
UH was picked to finish ahead of only UC Davis in the preseason poll released by the conference on Thursday.
The nine head coaches picked the Rainbow Warriors to finish tied for seventh with UC Riverside.
Hawaii ended last year tied for last with Cal State Northridge at 6-18 in conference. In its first year in the BWC, UH finished 11-16 in seventh place with two of those wins against Pacific, which has since bolted for the West Coast Conference.
"I wouldn’t say it’s surprising, but it’s not something that we’re looking into," four-year senior Stephen Ventimilia said. "For me and Kaeo (Aliviado), we’re the only four-year guys in our class that are going to graduate this year so we really want to go out with a bang. We want to go deep and make a playoff run and create some excitement around here for this."
Cal State Fullerton, which placed fourth in the league during a tumultuous 2014 campaign, earned five of the nine first-place votes to take the top spot in the poll by a single point over defending champion Cal Poly.
The Mustangs received three first-place votes with UC Santa Barbara, which is third, getting the other.
Rounding out the top five are UC Irvine, which advanced to the College World Series last season, and Long Beach State.
The Matadors were picked sixth.
Cal Poly (13), UCSB (16), Fullerton (17) and UCI (39) were all ranked in Collegiate Baseball’s preseason top 40.
Hawaii, with 18 newcomers on its roster, opens the season Feb. 14 at home against No. 15 Oregon.
"With 18 new guys, nobody knows anything about us," Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said.
Trapasso elected to Hall of Fame
Trapasso will be part of the 2015 class inducted into the Greater St. Louis Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame announced on Wednesday.
The 14-year UH head coach is the only inductee out of the 17 that will be enshrined as both a player and coach.
"This is a great honor knowing how tremendous of a baseball city St. Louis is," Trapasso said. "So many great players and coaches have come from there. When people hear the name St. Louis they think of baseball because it is such a great baseball city."
Born in St. Louis, Trapasso went to Jefferson Junior College for two years before transfering to Oklahoma State, where he went 12-3 over two seasons and won a game in the College World Series.
He was a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award in 1982 and pitched for Team USA the following year.
Trapasso was drafted four times —including in the third round by the Toronto Blue Jays 1983 —and played three seasons in the minor leagues before a shoulder injury cut his playing career short.
He got his start in coaching as an assistant at Missouri before serving as the pitching coach at South Florida for three years. He spent the next seven seasons at Georgia Tech before becoming the second full-time Division I head baseball coach at UH in 2001, where he has won 382 games.
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