Posted on: Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Rainbows hit road to test mettle
By Stacy Kaneshiro
Advertiser Staff Writer
After a 10-3 start at the friendly confines of Les Murakami Stadium, the Hawai'i baseball team will see if it can continue its success on the road.
The Rainbows embark on a four-game, six-day trip to California, where they will play a noon game tomorrow against San Francisco at the campus' Benedetti Field. They will then take a bus to Fresno on Thursday for a workout to prepare for a three-game series starting Friday against Fresno State at Beiden Field to open the Western Athletic Conference season.
The Rainbows were 1-18 on the road last year. Their only win came at Louisiana Tech.
Like the previous mid-week games, the Rainbows will give a number of pitchers work against USF. Right-hander Keahi Rawlins will start and probably go about three innings, UH coach Mike Trapasso said. A corp of relievers will follow.
"We'll try to get a lot of guys to throw an inning to keep everybody fresh for the weekend," he said.
The Rainbows have won three in a row, while the Dons (4-11) have dropped five consecutive. USF was swept in three games by UC Riverside during the weekend.
The Dons have ties to Hawai'i. Rainbows pitching coach Chad Konishi was an assistant at USF for six seasons before joining Trapasso at UH. Konishi will be honored by throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. He said he still keeps tabs with the USF staff.
"We talk about once a week," he said. "We talk about how (our teams) are playing, how so and so's doing."
The Dons have two players from Hawai'i who Konishi recruited. Sophomore second baseman Royce Fukuroku (Maui '00) has started 12 games and is batting .295 with a .456 on-base percentage. Sophomore shortstop Cy Donald (Mililani '00) has started nine games and is batting .135.
Konishi said Benedetti Field is a hitter-friendly park so his pitchers must keep their pitches low in the zone.
Then comes the crucial WAC series against Fresno State, picked to finish tied for second with San Jose State in a preseason poll of conference coaches.
The Bulldogs are off to a 4-10 start that might be deceiving. They have been swept in three-game series against No. 5 Cal State-Fullerton and No. 7 Stanford, as well as by Pepperdine. They won 2-of-3 from USF and 2-of-2 from UC Irvine, which will play UH later this season.
The Bulldogs have a new coach, but one familiar to UH baseball. Mike Batesole succeeded longtime coach Bob Bennett. Batesole coached at Cal State-Northridge for seven seasons before being hired by FSU. In his first season at CSUN in 1996, he led the Matadors to the WAC title. The Rainbows split six games with the Matadors that season, the last for CSUN in the WAC.
"Mike Batesole is one of the best coaches out there," Trapasso said. "We have to be at the very top of our game to win at Fresno."
Chris George, who leads the WAC with 28 strikeouts in 29° innings, and Justin Cayetano will start Friday and Saturday, respectively, for UH against FSU. Trapasso is undecided on Sunday's starter. He said Rawlins, Richie Olsen, also a freshman, Ricky Bauer and JC transfer Nick Ponomarenko are being considered.
Hawai'i is second in the WAC in batting at .307 and average 7.2 runs per game. Fresno State is last in the six-team conference at .212 and averages 2.9 runs per game.
Hawai'i junior shortstop Brian Finegan leads the WAC with seven doubles and is second in batting at .432. Junior right fielder Josh Green is tied for second with six doubles. Junior center fielder Tim Montgomery is tied for second with 16 RBIs and tied for second with four home runs.
