It is the pratfall nobody saw coming, the face-plant that has taken everybody aback.

Here the University of Hawaii baseball team is 1-12 heading into Friday’s opener of a five-game series with Gonzaga at Les Murakami Stadium, a facility that has seen plenty of surprises over the years from the home team, but few like what we have witnessed to open year No. 30.

Perhaps just the members of the 1933 team that went 1-10 — and only longtime 1420-AM sportscaster Don Robbs might know if there are, indeed, any survivors —  would know the feeling.

Now, in the stretch of games that unfolds over the next three weeks leading into the Big West Conference debut, we see what kind of tale these Rainbows will go about writing for themselves.

We’re about to find out the real measure of the 2013 ’Bows, an outfit that will have to pick itself up from an ignominious start, dust itself off and, for the final year of the name, anyway, get back to playing what we’ve come to know and celebrate as “Rainbow baseball.”  

There are still 10 weekends left to this season, time enough to do more than just salvage something, if the Rainbows are up to it. Conference hasn’t even started yet, so there is ample opportunity to demonstrate whether they will come to be known for their resiliency in rising to meet the considerable task or for rolling over to adversity.  

To be sure, the ’Bows have been brushed back by circumstance and now find themselves dealt a hand that is beyond challenging, their season having been made more uphill by the confluence of a tough schedule and debilitating pitching injuries. Their nonconference schedule was ranked the most arduous among 298 Division I teams going into the season, and that was before pitchers Andrew Jones and Quintin Torres-Costa went down, joining Jarrett Arakawa on the sidelines. That has effectively removed three of the top five arms from service.

But there is no waiver wire  — or farm system — in college baseball, so UH will have to find it within its roster and coaching staff to turn things around. You’d like to think there are enough pieces there, if some leaders can emerge to point the way and resolve is built.

What that means is that the ’Bows have to adapt and overcome. “We probably aren’t going to beat somebody 12-11,” head coach Mike Trapasso acknowledged. But it doesn’t mean, if their hitting comes around and small-ball execution improves, that they can’t take games that are of the 7-6 or 6-5 variety.

They will have to scrap for what runs they do manufacture, continue to play tight defense and be economical on the mound with the pitching they summon.

And it doesn’t get any easier beginning Friday, with UH expected to face Gonzaga left-hander Marco Gonzales, a preseason All-America pick by Baseball America and a projected first-round draft selection.

But then, as the ’Bows should know by now, any notion of ease or comfort left the park a while ago.

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