When the decision came down that Hawaii would move to the Big West Conference in almost all sports other than football, one UH coach was as happy as anybody.
"When they announced the move, we hit the lottery," baseball coach Mike Trapasso said. "This is what the conference is known for."
Hawaii will open play in a league not named the Western Athletic Conference for the first time in 34 years when it hosts UC Santa Barbara on Thursday night at Les Murakami Stadium.
The Rainbows move from a conference that rarely had more than one team play in an NCAA regional to one that routinely puts two, three or even four teams into the postseason tournament.
However, last season marked the first time in 26 years only one team represented the Big West in an NCAA regional. League champion Cal State Fullerton qualified for the postseason for the 21st consecutive season.
"It was very disheartening," said Cal Poly coach Larry Lee, whose team was left out despite winning 36 games and finishing only one back of Fullerton. "Last year our conference slipped to 12th in RPI and that was hard for me to understanding looking at some of the other conferences around us."
After a down year, the conference looks to have regained its standing as one of the top conferences in the country, with three teams ranked in the latest ESPN/USA Today Top 25.
The Titans are ranked No. 6, while UC Irvine sits at No. 22 and Cal Poly, which is ranked in all five major polls, checks in at No. 25.
"This is a conference where it doesn’t matter where any particular team is in the standings at that particular time," Lee said. "All series are tough and wins are hard to come by, which is a plus for the conference overall."
Two years ago, Hawaii won a share of the regular-season WAC title with a 17-7 record in league play and finished runner-up to Fresno State in the conference tournament. It was 34-25 overall and played a nonconference schedule that included top-10 teams Texas and Cal State Fullerton as well as Oregon, Loyola Marymount, Long Beach State and Wichita State, which all finished over .500.
Nonetheless, it opened conference play winning seven of eight games, yet its RPI dropped nearly 20 spots. By the end of the year, the Rainbows were out of the conversation with an RPI that slipped to 69 despite a .708 winning percentage in league play.
"Obviously it’s not the case this year, but the idea coming into this was that if we could be in the neighborhood of .500 looking at an RPI in the top 30 or 40 going into conference, then if we finished in the top half of the league we wouldn’t fall off like we did in the WAC," Trapasso said.
The Rainbows enter the conference with a league-worst 5-16 record and an uncharacteristically low RPI of 209.
Lee has guided the Mustangs to five 30-wins seasons and eight top-four finishes in 11 years, but made only one regional appearance in 2009.
"We want to try and better our conference in terms of getting a higher RPI, and so the more quality teams we can bring in, the better," Lee said. "Hawaii has always played a very solid nonconference schedule and that’s part of the equation to give yourself a chance at having an RPI, so we thought it’d be good for the Big West.
The Mustangs won’t travel to Hawaii until next season. After this weekend’s series against the Gauchos, Hawaii will embark on a brutally tough road trip with seven straight games against ranked teams.
UH will squeeze in a nonconference game at No. 7 UCLA between series against the Mustangs and the Anteaters.
"It’s a step up from the WAC, and it’s almost a dream come true because you’re playing the top teams in the nation, which is what you always want to do," senior right-hander Connor Little said.
With the situation UH finds itself in, one drawback in changing conferences this year is the Big West doesn’t have a postseason tournament with the winner automatically qualifying for a regional.
"We’ve been on both sides of it," UH third baseman Pi‘ikea Kitamura said. "Obviously I loved it my freshman year and a tournament is nice … but we won the WAC two years ago too and didn’t make it."
