HONOLULU – Harry Gustin delivered the best outing of his career to lead the Hawai'i baseball team to a 3-1 win over Tulane in the series opener Friday night at Les Murakami Stadium.
Gustin dominated from the get-go on the way to throwing a career-high seven innings of one-hit ball while giving up just one run. The sophomore fanned a career-high eight batters while walking just one and had a no-hitter going through six innings before a homer to lead off the seventh broke it up.
Tulane (6-16) starter Dylan Carmouche went toe-to-toe with Gustin over the first five frames, as neither starter gave up a run with Carmouche fanning six and Gustin five over that stretch.
The Rainbow Warriors (10-8) finally broke through in the bottom of the sixth, scoring three runs on three hits. After a wild pitch with the bases loaded and one out scored
Jordan Donahue and put UH in front,
Kyson Donahue followed with a two-out, two-run double off the left field wall to make it 3-0.
The Green Wave broke up Gustin's no-hit bid to lead off the seventh, when Adam Ebling delivered a pinch-hit homer to make it 3-1 but Gustin struck out the next three batters to limit the damage there.
From there, UH turned it over to its bullpen as
Alex Giroux got the first two outs of the eighth inning before
Connor Harrison relieved him and got a strikeout to strand runners on the corners. Harrison came back out for the ninth and picked up two more punch-outs to secure his fourth save of the year.
The trio of Gustin, Giroux and Harrison combined to lead Hawai'i to a Friday night victory for the fourth straight week. All three have pitched in that order in each of UH's last four series openers and have combined for a 1.22 ERA and 46 strikeouts over that stretch.
Kyson Donahue extended his hitting streak to 10 games with his key two-run double in the pivotal sixth inning, marking the first time a Rainbow Warrior has hit safely in at least 10 straight since teammate
Stone Miyao had a 13-game hitting streak last April.
The 'Bows and Green Wave continue their series Saturday night with a 6:35 p.m. first pitch at Les Murakami Stadium.
