With a thorough and completely dominant effort, the University of Hawaii baseball team walloped UC Santa Barbara 17-1 at Les Murakami Stadium on Thursday night.
Hawaii, which entered the weekend with a chance to finish the season tied for first in the Big West Conference standings, improved to 27-20 overall and 16-12 in Big West Conference play.
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Regardless of how the Rainbow Warriors do the rest of the weekend, they are not able to win a tiebreaker for first. However, Thursday’s win guaranteed them a winning conference record for the second year in a row.
The Rainbow Warriors racked up 18 hits on Thursday, with five players racking up multiple hits, led by Matt Wong’s two home runs in the second and third innings.
Wong became the first ‘Bow since Adam Fogel in 2019 to hit two home runs at Les Murakami Stadium. Additionally, he also hit his 10th home run of the season, becoming the first ‘Bow since Jeff Van Doornum hit 14 home runs in 2010 to reach the double-digit mark.
Harry Gustin got the start and the win for Hawaii, striking out a career-high nine in five innings while giving up six hits, three walks and one run.
Alex Giroux did the rest of the pitching for UH, striking out the first eight batters he faced to set the tone for his four shutout innings.
Matt Ager took the loss for UC Santa Barbara (35-18, 18-10 Big West Conference), allowing six runs in 1.1 innings.
The ‘Bows and Gauchos will resume their series on Friday at 6:35 p.m.
