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You still need to make a melee touch attack or a melee attack (with spellstrike) to effect them. The reason is that if you use poolstrike in spellstrike, and thus need a melee attack, you might touch them with your whip, but you won't bypass their armor. If you use Spell Combat, however, that is like TWF and you get a touch attack and a trip manuever.
You can use spell strike with a combat maneuver such as a trip. The catch is that you can't do it with spell combat unless you are able to substitute an iterative attack with a combat maneuver. To combine spell strike with a trip you simply have to cast a touch spell in one round and not touch anything for the rest of the round. Then next turn attempt a trip. If it is successful the target is both tripped and suffers from the effect of the spell.
Spell combat allows you to cast a spell in conjunction with a full round attack, but a trip can't be made in a full round attack without feats or class skills to allow it. Thus you cannot cast the touch spell and make the trip in the same round.
You are correct. I was under the impression that the feats "improved 'and combat maneuver here'" allowed this AND stopped the AoO. But hey, you learn something new every day.
So to answer the original question, yes, you can spell combat, spell strike, and trip all at once. However you cannot substitute the "free melee touch attack" a spell gives you unless you have spell strike to make it a normal attack. So in essence you can't do what you want until 2nd level.