HONOLULU – For the third straight game, the University of Hawai'i baseball team scored double digit runs against Hawai'i Pacific on Saturday at Les Murakami Stadium. Freshman starter
Austin Teixeira spun 7.0 innings with eight strikeouts on 89 total pitches in his first start for Hawai'i.
The Rainbow Warriors (4-2) slugged their way to their highest hit count since 2019 with 18 hits including doubles from redshirt juniors
Adam Fogel and
Alex Baeza and sophomore
Tyler Best.
Teixeira, coming off a 2.0 inning relief outing at Arizona State continued his strong start to 2021 by allowing zero earned runs for the second straight appearance. After allowing two runs on a couple of errors in the second inning, the southpaw settled in and faced the minimum in the fifth and seventh, showing that he got stronger and more precise as the game went on.
Dating back to the end of the 2020 season, Best moved his active hitting streak to 10 games after going 2-4 with an RBI and a run scored. Best improved his batting average to .381, third best on the team and is second on the team in RBI with six.
Freshman
Aaron Ujimori continued his blazing hot start to the season with a 4-5 day and 2 RBI. The second baseman leads the Rainbow Warriors in hitting at .444 and has driven in four runs. Ujimori is the second UH player to have a four-hit game in the series (Fogel in game one).
Sophomore
Cameron Hagan made his second appearance with another scoreless outing. Hagan has allowed just two baserunners in 3.0 innings pitched.
Hawai'i started the scoring in the first inning with a two-out double from Baeza to score sophomore
Scotty Scott.
The Sharks scored their only two runs of the game in the top of the third inning after a lead-off single, an error and then two more singles. Both runs were unearned.
The Rainbow Warriors then manufactured their first of two three-run innings in the bottom half of the inning courtesy of a lead-off single, an HPU error and an RBI single from Best.
Freshman
Safea Villaruz-Mauai plated a pair with his first collegiate hit to give Hawai'i a 4-2 lead after three innings.
Hawai'i scored a run in the fourth, three in the sixth and a pair in the eighth. Hawai'i's 18 hits were the most since its 19 hits at UC Riverside in April 2019.
The two teams play again on Sunday for the final game of the series at 1:05 p.m. HT.