HONOLULU – Thanks to another come from behind effort, the Hawai'i baseball team bounced back from its first defeat of the season a night ago with a 4-2 win over Wichita State before a sold out Les Murakami Stadium crowd of 4,540 Saturday.
The Rainbow Warriors scored the final three runs of the game to erase an early deficit, highlighted by
Xaige Lancaster's go-ahead two-run double in the sixth inning. From there, the UH bullpen did the rest as four relievers combined to shut out the Shockers over the final five innings.
Head coach
Rich Hill picked up his milestone 100th win as the Hawai'i skipper, matching legendary head coach Les Murakami for the fewest games to reach 100 wins at UH, doing so in 161 games.
The Shockers struck first for the third straight game, jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the fourth. UH answered right back in the bottom half, when
Draven Nushida delivered a two-out RBI single to cut the deficit in half.
The Rainbow Warriors again rallied with two in the sixth to score a pair and take the lead. After a
Jared Quandt walk and Nushida base hit, Lancaster came up with two outs and smashed a double off the left center field wall to put UH in front, 3-2.
Ben Zeigler-Namoa doubled the lead one inning later with another clutch two-out hit, driving a base hit the other way to make it 4-2.
Cory Ronan, who was originally slated to start Sunday, picked up the win throwing a scoreless sixth and seventh inning with a pair of strikeouts.
Isaiah Magdaleno closed things out from there, going the final two innings to earn the save.
Nushida and
Elijah Ickes each deliverd multi-hit game, with Nushida finishing 2-for-3 and Ickes going 2-for-4 while
Shunsuke Sakaino extended his hitting streak to 13 straight games dating back to last year while he played for CSUN with a fifth-inning double.
The Rainbow Warriors close out their series against Wichita State at 1:05 p.m. Sunday at Les Murakami Stadium.
