Passed over for the head baseball coaching job at the University of Oklahoma late Thursday night, Hawai'i coach Mike Trapasso was back working Friday morning at what one of his brethren enviously termed the best consolation prize in America.

Said a Pac-10 coach: "It is still Hawai'i, isn't it? That doesn't look too bad to me."

Indeed, there is a lot to recommend the job that Trapasso returned to as he attended a recruiting showcase in Los Angeles. And there is even more to keep him busy making it a better one as he steps into year five of Project Turnaround.

If there was disappointment in coming so close to landing a Top 25 job in the marquee Big 12 Conference and all that comes with it, there was scant time to wallow in it. Not when recruiting is under way for the 2006 campaign and there is ground to be made up after the uncertainties of the week-long will-he-or-won't-he go to Oklahoma situation.

It says something about how the Rainbows are viewed that when word got out Trapasso was one of three candidates brought in to interview at OU, other coaches tried to position themselves if there was an opening at UH.

For there is considerable potential at UH, where, despite three consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 1991-93, the surface has just been scratched. It is a good program that can be made even more attractive if Trapasso is able to follow through on what he was brought in to accomplish.

That is to return the Rainbows to the postseason after what has become a 12-year absence from the NCAA tournament. It is also, after a 13-year drought, to bring a Western Athletic Conference championship banner to UH, where both are overdue.

The Rainbows thought they had shots at the whole caboodle last season before stumbling to a 28-27 finish.

This year they need to do better — and should. Most of the ingredients are there. There is a good core of returning players and, what's more, there is no more Rice in the WAC. The Owls, after winning the past nine WAC titles, are now Conference USA's problem.

Not that the third-place Rainbows, who experienced their first winning season in the WAC since 1999, will lack for challenges with Fresno State and the rest.

Sometimes the problem with being up for a job somewhere else is that when you don't get it the people you return to tend to look at you a little differently.

For Trapasso, the best way to answer that and position himself for the next big opportunity is to make some major progress in the job he was brought in here to do.