Baseball tourney
in WAC’s future

Sacramento State will join
the conference in 2006

There will be some important changes in Western Athletic Conference baseball when the 2006 season starts.

Rice, the only baseball-playing school leaving for Conference USA, is done after the 2005 season.

Of the three new WAC schools -- Utah State, Idaho and New Mexico State -- only N.M. State has a baseball team.

Yesterday, the WAC announced that Sacramento State has accepted an invitation to be an affiliate member of the conference in baseball starting with the 2006 season.

That gives the league seven schools with baseball teams and is insurance that the WAC will continue to have the minimum number (six) necessary to qualify for an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament should Louisiana Tech leave the conference in the future.

"The most interesting thing in our coaches meetings and the follow up with e-mail and conference calls, was that this will shorten our schedule to 24 games and we will add a postseason tournament starting in 2006," Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said.

The WAC has not conducted a postseason tournament since 1999 despite the lobbying efforts of the coaches every year since. Cost was the usual reason cited by the league office for not having a postseason tournament.

Sacramento State will play as an independent for the third consecutive season this spring after being in the Big West Conference from 1998 to 2002. The Hornets were an affiliate member of the WAC from 1993 to 1996 when the expanded league was divided into two divisions. They were 42-65 in WAC play and 103-120 overall during those four seasons.

WAC Commissioner Karl Benson said in a release, "Sacramento State will be a good fit with the baseball teams in the WAC. We expect that they will match up both competitively and geographically."

"With fewer league games, individual teams will have more control over their RPI. Coaches can decide to play a light schedule and hope to win the conference tourney. Or they can play strong teams and improve their RPI for an at-large berth if they don't win the conference," said Trapasso.

With seven teams, the league schedule is unbalanced. A team will play two other teams three games at home and three games away. That team will play the other four teams three games either at home or away on alternating years.

In 2006, Hawaii has home-and-home series with San Jose State and Louisiana Tech. The Rainbows play New Mexico State and Sacramento State at home and travel to Fresno State and Nevada.

UH's 2006 nonconference schedule includes UC Irvine, Loyola Marymount, Southern California, Western Illinois and Arizona for individual series with Arkansas, Washington and San Francisco in the Rainbow Tournament.

It has not been determined what site will be used for the postseason tournament.

"One choice is to rotate the tournament," said Trapasso. "There was discussion on doing it like women's soccer, where the previous year's winner hosts, and we (Hawaii) voted to have the tournament awarded through a bid process."

Note: Seniors Ricky Bauer and Greg Kish were voted captains for the 2005 season by their teammates.