HONOLULU – Thanks to an early onslaught of offense and another strong combined effort on the mound, the Hawai'i baseball team finished off a sweep of UC Davis with a 7-2 win Sunday at Les Murakami Stadium.
The Rainbow Warriors (25-18, 14-10 Big West) won their sixth straight game at home and stayed alive in the Big West title race. UH now sits in fifth place in the standings, and are three games behind league-leader Cal State Fullerton with six games remaining.
The 'Bows wasted no time jumping out to an early lead. After a pair of walks,
Kyson Donahue put UH on the board with a double off the top of the wall in right field score
Dallas Duarte.
Jacob Igawa made it 3-0 one batter later with a two-run base knock to right field, before
Stone Miyao doubled to right center, scoring Igawa to cap off a four-run first.
Matt Wong added to the Rainbow Warrior lead in the second inning, hitting a one-out opposite field solo homer to right field. A walk and base hit followed to put runners on the corners, and Miyao came up and drove in his second run of the day with a sacrifice fly to make it 6-0.
The Aggies (17-30, 7-17 Big West) responded with two runs in the third to cut the Hawai'i lead to 6-2, but that was all that would be allowed by the UH pitching staff.
Connor Harrison got his first start of the year and went four innings before turning it over to
Tyler Dyball, who shut UCD out over the next 2.2 innings to earn the win.
Harrison Bodendorf entered with two outs in the seventh and worked 2.1 shutout innings with three strikeouts to earn his third save on the year and second of the weekend.
Kyson Donahue finished the game 3-for-4 with three doubles and three runs scored, becoming the first Hawai'i player to have three doubles in a game since Apr. 7, 2019 (Daylen Calicdan). Igawa turned in another big day at the plate, going 3-for-5 with three RBIs and a run scored while Miyao also had a multi-RBI game with two after going 1-for-4.
Jordan Donahue went 2-for-2 with two walks to cap off a solid two-game stretch, going 5-for-7 over the weekend.
Hawai'i pitching completed another strong weekend at home, holding the Aggies to three or fewer runs in all three games to make it 12 of the last 15 at home that UH has limited teams to fewer than four runs. In the last 15 games at Les Murakami Stadium, Rainbow pitching owns a 2.40 ERA with an overall record of 12-3 in the stretch.
The Rainbow Warriors head back on the road for a three-game series at CSUN, starting Friday at 12 p.m. HT.
