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Hawaii will ring in the 2024 baseball season with signature power conference opponents in Ole Miss and NC State, but it won’t exactly be rolling out the proverbial orange and green carpet for them.
The Rainbow Warriors’ lengthy wait for a new turf field at Les Murakami Stadium is expected to extend through the 2024 season. UH, which announced its full 2024 schedule on Thursday, will likely have its new surface in place by 2025, UH Athletic Director Craig Angelos told Spectrum News.
“The money was transferred now,” Angelos said in a message. “We are working with our university personnel to get the design team, etc. going. But (I) can’t see how the turf will be able to get installed before the season starts, so I anticipate it being completed in the summer.”
The existing DomoTurf was installed in 2008 and is several years beyond its life expectancy of about a decade. It is showing its age in several respects – a bleached surface that is uneven in spots, with worn and bare patches.
In addition, UH’s batting practice complex is still without a roof, a problem since early in Rich Hill’s first season as coach in 2022.
UPDATE: Angelos said on ESPN Honolulu's Craig Angelos Show on Thursday night that $18.5 million in Capital Improvement Project money recently allocated from Gov. Josh Green's office will be allocated for the turf, new batting cage and possibly premium seating behind home plate for the 2025 season.
Hill and the Rainbows will nonetheless have a competitive 53-game schedule that begins with a four-game series against Ole Miss of the Southeastern Conference on Feb. 16, followed by a three-gamer against NC State of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Ole Miss won the College World Series in 2022 and but went 6-24 in the potent SEC last year (25-29 overall). NC State was 36-21 in 2022.
The others in the nonconference series are Holy Cross (March 1-4), Rice (March 8-11), and San Diego State (March 22-24).
UH won 11 of its final 12 home games in 2023 for a 19-7 mark at the Les, contributing to an overall winning season (29-20) and in the Big West (18-12).
This year’s 30-game BWC load is the last year that the regular season decides the league’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament before the Big West baseball tournament debuts in 2025.
The Rainbows seek their third straight winning conference season. They play 36 at home this year, including BWC series against UC Irvine (March 28-30); Cal Poly (April 19-21); Cal State Northridge (May 3-5); UC Riverside (May 9-12); and Cal State Fullerton (May 23-25).
Big West play begins March 15 at Cal State Bakersfield as the first of five conference road series. The others are UC Davis (April 5-7); UC Santa Barbara (April 12-14); defending champion UC San Diego (April 26-28); and Long Beach State (May 17-19). UH will bridge the Davis and USCB series with a stand-alone game at Santa Clara of the West Coast Conference on April 9 for a seven-game road trip.
UH will play a stand-alone home game against the three local PacWest Conference teams, Hawaii Pacific (April 2), Chaminade (April 16) and Hawaii Hilo (April 30).
Chaminade relaunched its baseball program from the early 1980s and hired former UH assistant Chad Konishi to lead it. The programs will encounter each other for the first time. The Silverswords will also play their final six home games of the season at the Les when UH is out of town.
The Big West announced this week that Cal State Fullerton, a traditional power in baseball and softball, will host the inaugural Big West tournaments in those sports in 2025.
UH will have to wait until at least 2028 to host a championship at Les Murakami Stadium or Rainbow Wahine Softball Stadium. The 2026 and 2027 softball tournaments will be played at CSUF then Long Beach State, and the 2026 and 2027 baseball tournaments will be at UC Irvine, then Long Beach State.
The softball tournament will be a six-team, double-elimination format. The baseball championship will be a five-team event with a play-in game for the Nos. 4 and 5 seeds, followed by a double-elimination four-team tournament.
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.