HONOLULU — Bob Coolen had company and now has satisfaction: The Big West Conference has postseason events in the three sports that lacked them.
Big West women’s volleyball, baseball, and, yes, Coolen’s sport of softball will debut tournaments in the coming years to determine the league’s automatic NCAA representative, falling into step with most of the Division I landscape.
“It’s going to be something that everyone has a chance to look forward to postseason play,” an upbeat Coolen told Spectrum News in a phone interview soon after the conference released its announcement Friday.
“It gives us a lot more impetus to play for a full year, because anything can happen,” the coach added, comparing it to sports like basketball in which teams are constantly jockeying for postseason seeding. “One loss at the end of the year is not going to make or break whether you’re in the top two and being considered.”
Volleyball will be the first with a six-team championship in late November 2023 at Long Beach State. To compensate, the BWC’s 11 teams will play an 18-game conference regular season, scaled back from the full round-robin complement of 20 games.
Baseball and softball follow with tournaments in 2025, after previously arranged schedules for the 2023 and 2024 seasons run their course. Softball will play a six-team, double-elimination format over three days at a site to be announced in early May 2025. Baseball’s format — the number of teams, single or double elimination, and the site — has yet to be determined.
“I believe it is a positive for student-athlete experience,” UH Athletic Director David Matlin told Spectrum News in a message. “There will always be some logistical issues that need to be navigated. I have confidence we will get through these logistics as a conference.”
Said Big West Commissioner Dan Butterly, in the conference's release: "Adding championships in women’s volleyball, softball and baseball is a tremendously exciting move for the Big West. Expanding opportunities for our student-athletes to compete for Big West and NCAA championships is a positive step..."
As for whether UH will be in position to host some of the new tournaments, Matlin said, “Yes I believe there will be hosting opportunities, but those details still have to be worked out with our conference colleagues and office.”
Coolen believes the softball tournament will regularly reside at Cal State Fullerton, which has one of the league’s nicer venues and is centrally located.
UH’s second-longest tenured head coach entering his 33rd season, Coolen has pushed for a conference softball tournament going back to his rookie season as coach in 1991, in the Rainbow Wahine’s initial go-around in the Big West. Then, as in modern times until this week, it had fallen on deaf ears.
The issue was moot when UH left for the WAC in 1997 — that league had an established conference tournament — but when UH rejoined the Big West in 2012, Coolen went right back to stumping every offseason. The Big West was one of the two holdouts to not have a tournament among 32 Division I conferences, along with the West Coast Conference.
The BWC’s 10 softball coaches had been in favor of a tournament for years, Coolen said, save regular contenders Long Beach State and Fullerton, which could count on the NCAA berth from a regular-season championship or an occasional at-large selection. But the vote never survived past the schools’ senior women’s administrators, through the athletic directors, all the way to the Big West Board of Directors, which is comprised of school presidents.
“I think the tipping point was women’s volleyball and baseball also bought in to having a tournament,” Coolen said. “Finally, it was not just softball. We were the lone wolf for a while, asking for a tournament year after year after year.”
Coolen’s team last won the Big West and made it to the NCAA tournament in 2013. The Wahine would’ve qualified for a top-six league tournament in 2015, 2019 and 2021.
UH baseball coach Rich Hill made his feeling about a conference tournament known throughout his first season in Manoa in the spring of 2022. The Big West is the only Division I baseball conference without a tournament.
“It’s time for a Big West Conference tournament. With 11 teams, it’s definitely time,” Hill told Spectrum News in May. “There’s a lot of advantages (for) teams like us. … I’m in favor of a six-team tournament. The top two teams get a bye, much like the West Coast Conference. It’s definitely time and I’m going to be pushing for that.”
UH baseball hasn’t made the NCAA tournament since 2010. The 2021 season, in which UH finished third, was the Rainbows’ first winning conference season in the Big West.
In volleyball it is of course a different story, as the Rainbow Wahine are used to either winning the regular season outright or positioning themselves for an at-large berth — they have made NCAA tournaments in their last 29 seasons.
A conference tournament could complicate matters, forcing the Wahine to win do-or-die matches in single-bid years for the conference. And the 18-game schedule could prevent UH from playing a home game against one of its top rivals like Cal Poly or UC Santa Barbara.
A UH volleyball staff member indicated through a source that the team will focus on scheduling tough and winning, as in any other season, to maximize its postseason chances.
Meanwhile Coolen, who is on the last year of his contract, hopes to prove himself worthy of an extension to Matlin and administration this spring so he can be around to see the first tournament in 2025.
Also Friday, the Big West announced that its men’s and women’s basketball seasons of 2023-24 will revert to a 20-game conference schedule, instead of the 18-game slate previously announced to accommodate the NCAA’s “Wild Card Week.” The NCAA initiative did not pan out, the Big West said, thus the reversal.
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com