The Hawaii baseball team has dug itself quite the hole in its final Big West season, but not an insurmountable one.<\/p>\n
UH lost a 2-1 pitcher\u2019s duel to Long Beach State at Bohl Diamond at Blair Field on Sunday afternoon, meaning it dropped its second straight series to begin its 2026 conference season.<\/p>\n
The Rainbow Warriors (10-9) are 1-5 in conference play for the program\u2019s worst start in its Big West era that began in 2013. The last time it started 1-5 was in the Western Athletic Conference in 2010. UH finished 12-12 in conference play that year and went on to win the WAC tournament for its most recent NCAA Tournament appearance.<\/p>\n
The top five teams after 30 league games qualify for the Big West tournament at UC Irvine in late May. UH will leave the conference after this season.<\/p>\n
Coach Rich Hill might wish he saved some runs from Friday for the rest of the weekend. After thumping LBSU 11-1 behind a gem from Isaiah Magdaleno (six innings, five hits, one walk and nine strikeouts), the \u2018Bows dropped one-run games on Saturday (7-6) and Sunday.<\/p>\n
Liam O\u2019Brien gave his team a chance in the finale, going four innings with two runs allowed on one hit and five walks. Brody Martin-Grudzielanek and John Alkire II combined to toss the last four innings. Alkire sparkled in the final 2 2\/3, striking out four without allowing a baserunner.<\/p>\n
But the Beach\u2019s Jason Gerfers was too good in a four-hit solo performance. Gerfers, who was perfect through three innings, struck out seven against two walks and became the second player to throw a complete game against UH this year, along with Ball State\u2019s Brendan Garza on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n
Kamana Nahaku was UH\u2019s lone run in the fourth when he reached on a hit-by-pitch and came around on consecutive singles from Ben Zeigler-Namoa and Elijah Ickes.<\/p>\n
LBSU\u2019s Dylan Lina hit a solo shot to left in the second. Matt Toomey\u2019s sacrifice fly in the fifth was the difference.<\/p>\n
UH’s two-week road trip rolls on.<\/p>\n
One of the Big West\u2019s elite teams, UC Santa Barbara (14-4, 4-2), awaits at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium at 1:35 p.m. Hawaii time Friday. The Gauchos are coming off a 2-1 series loss at UC Davis.<\/p>\n
Brian McInnis<\/a>\u00a0covers the state\u2019s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii.\u00a0He can be reached at\u00a0brian.mcinnis@<\/a>charter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hawaii baseball team has dug itself quite the hole in its final Big West season, but not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[19375,6632,6631,19376,1815,2289,131,133,132,127,136],"class_list":["post-221660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-app-college-sports","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brian-mcinnis","tag-college","tag-hawaii","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}