HONOLULU – The Hawai'i baseball team opened the 2024 season dropping a marathon 13-inning battle against 2022 College World Series champion Ole Miss, 5-4, Friday in front of a sellout crowd at Les Murakami Stadium.
After falling behind early, the Rainbow Warriors fought back and took the lead after eight innings, but couldn't hold on in the ninth before the Rebels pushed across the game-winning run in the 13th inning.
The two teams went scoreless in the 10th through 12th innings before Ole Miss' Ethan Lege drove in the go-ahead run with a single in the top of the 13th.
The Rebels struck first, getting a pair of runs in the second and one in the third. Ethan Groff started the scoring with a two-run homer in the second and Ole Miss struck for one more in the third to go up 3-0.
The Rainbow Warriors would respond in a big way with three runs in the fourth inning to tie it up.
Austin Machado put the 'Bows on the board with a long single off the right field wall that
Ben Zeigler-Namoa came around to score on following a close play at the plate.
Sean Rimmer cut the deficit to one on an RBI infield hit back to the pitcher before
Kyson Donahue knotted things up at three with a double down the left field line, scoring Machado.
After neither team scored over the next three frames, the 'Bows broke the 3-3 tie with a run in the eighth. Zeigler-Namoa and
Matthew Miura led off the inning with singles before Miura eventually came in to score on a wild pitch, making it 4-3.
Ole Miss would come back to tie in in the top of the ninth on a bases loaded sacrifice fly and UH couldn't push one across in the bottom half to send it to extras.
Friday night's crowd of 4,633 was the largest opening night attendance since the 2015 season opener against Oregon while marking the second-straight sellout at Les Murakami Stadium dating back to last year.
The Rainbow Warriors and Rebels will play a doubleheader Saturday beginning at 1:05 p.m. Game one is scheduled to go seven innings while game two is set to be a full nine frames.
