Conference play begins against UC Irvine

Mike Trapasso’s goal for the Big West baseball season is simple in theory.

“At the end of the season I’m just looking at doing the best we can and doing better than we did last year in conference,” the 15-year UH baseball coach said.

That would mean a winning record in a conference where five of the nine teams enter the weekend with a .667 winning percentage or higher.

So much for simple.

UH went 14-34 in its first two seasons before nearly matching its win total last season in a 12-12 campaign that included sweeps of UC Riverside, UC Davis and Long Beach State, effectively knocking the Dirtbags out of postseason contention.

Where Hawaii (11-14) has to improve is against the upper tier of the conference. UH has a winning record (5-4) against UC Santa Barbara, which hosted a regional last year.

The three problem teams are Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly and UC Irvine, which the Rainbow Warriors open with tonight at Les Murakami Stadium.

Hawaii is a combined 2-25 against those three schools in BWC play. The Anteaters (15-7) are the only team UH has yet to beat in conference.

“They do everything right,” UH outfielder Marcus Doi said. “They play small ball, they execute, their pitchers are pretty good and they hit, so that’s probably our biggest games of the year, opening up with Irvine at home.”

UC Irvine won all three games against Hawaii by one or two runs last season.

Left-hander Elliot Surrey (2-1, 3.12 ERA), who will start tonight’s opener for UCI, shut out UH with a six-hitter.

UC Irvine is one of six Big West teams with an RPI in the top 86 entering conference play and has won six of its last seven.

“We’ve won more games than I would have thought that we could have won at this point,” UCI coach Mike Gillespie said. “We’ve run into some luck late in games.”

The Anteaters will play for only the second time in 10 days. A last-minute scheduling conflict forced a team to pull out of last weekend’s scheduled series.

Gillespie tried to fill the hole in his schedule by getting a team to come to Anteater Ballpark, but couldn’t. UCI took two days off and held three intrasquad scrimmages to get his pitchers some work, but it was not the ideal situation heading into conference play.

“It’s not good,” Gillespie said. “Our (starters) all made starts (in scrimmages) and probably had their pitch counts down but not so much that they didn’t get their work in.”

Hawaii’s 3.67 team ERA is nearly a half-run better than UC Irvine’s at 4.11.

The Anteaters feature the league’s top hitter in center fielder Keston Hiura, who is hitting .463 (38-for-82) with four doubles, two triples, seven homers and 25 RBIs. He is in the top 11 in the country in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

“Our level of play is going to have to rise because the level of competition is going to rise in conference,” Trapasso said. “Irvine across the board is always good and always the single- most well-coached team because Mike Gillespie is that good. They really swing the bats well.”

Playing three games instead of four games should help Hawaii, which has won at least two of the first three games in a series in four out of the last five weekends.

UH is 8-5 in games started by Alex Hatch and Kyle Von Ruden. Tonight’s starter, Brendan Hornung (2-5, 2.51), has factored into the decision in all seven of his starts but has been given more than one run of support only three times.

Hornung is tied for second in the conference with 40 strikeouts, while Von Ruden leads the Big West averaging 0.77 walks allowed per nine innings.