Gotta hand it to Trapasso, he likes to schedule tough

On a bulletin board beside his desk in the University of Hawaii baseball office, Mike Trapasso has a daily reminder of what ambition looks like.

It is called the Rainbows’ 2013 schedule.

And as Friday’s opening night with 15th-ranked Oregon at Les Murakami Stadium approaches, so does the ruminating.

“Sometimes, I wonder what have I gotten myself in for,” Trapasso said.

Led off by the Ducks, who were 46-19 last season, there are five nationally ranked opponents in a season in which the ’Bows step up to the Big West Conference from the Western Athletic Conference. Seven of UH’s nine nonconference opponents (Oregon, Rice, UCLA, Fresno State, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga and Wichita State) are forecast to finish no worse than third in their conferences.

Small wonder UH’s nonconference strength of schedule, based on opponents’ 2012 records, is ranked No. 1 (among 298 teams) while its overall schedule is listed as No. 12 by the college baseball website boydsworld.com.

Perhaps not since 1997, when Les Murakami’s ’Bows played six teams that finished the season ranked in the Top 25 (Miami, UCLA, USC, Washington, Wichita State and Fresno State), has UH embarked on a more challenging schedule.

Of course, back then it haunted them in a 22-34 finish that was Murakami’s only losing season since the program’s early 1970s beginnings.

Scheduling formidably apparently comes with the keys to the baseball coach’s office because Trapasso has booked ’em tough in his tenure. Instead of scheduling Twinkies to assure a run of 40-win seasons, which would have looked good on the resume but not done anything for postseason hopes or ticket sales, Trapasso went for the challenge.

It made a lot of sense when the ’Bows were in the WAC because for all the “Play up!” mandates, the majority of the members scheduled weak and it was reflected in drooping Ratings Percentage Index scores each year.

Several times UH would come out of the nonconference portion of its schedule ranked in the RPI top 20s or 30s and then get dragged down to the 80s or 90s by bottom-feeding brethren.

So, you figured the go-for-broke approach to scheduling might be curtailed by the move to the stronger Big West this season, a conference that has been known to land three or four teams in the NCAA tournament. Even last year, in what was considered a “down” season for the Big West, two teams still went to the postseason.

Yet, once again and most admirably, Trapasso went for the competition. Even in gaps around Big West road series, when few would have said a peep about sticking a nonconference breather with Point Loma Nazarene between series at UC Irvine and Cal Poly or an Academy of Art between stops at Long Beach State and Pacific, Trapasso added games at UCLA and Fresno State, instead.

At some point Trapasso might come to rue ambitious scheduling. In the meantime, how about a hand for setting out to make it interesting.

———

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.