Strong pitching and timely hitting allowed the Hawaii baseball team to snap its five-game Big West losing streak.
Harrison Bodendorf threw four scoreless innings — retiring the final 10 batters he faced — and Sean Rimmer had the go-ahead pinch-hit single in the top of the 10th inning as the Rainbow Warriors rallied to beat UC Davis 4-2 at Dobbins Stadium on Saturday.
UH (17-11, 3-5 BWC) evened the series at a game apiece and will go for the win at 10 a.m. Hawaii time Sunday.
Coach Rich Hill and the ‘Bows got a quality start in a BWC game for the first time since the conference opener at Cal State Bakersfield as Randy Abshier went six innings with six hits, three walks and two runs allowed. One came in on a balk in the fourth.
But Abshier gave the beleaguered UH bullpen a much-needed break after it was rocked in Friday’s 9-5 loss, and his fellow left-hander Bodendorf (2-3) was in full command in picking up the win.
Freshman Elijah Ickes drew a one-out walk off of Braydon Wooldridge in the 10th and Jordan Donahue was intentionally walked. Hill elected to pinch-hit Rimmer for Stone Miyao, and his gambit paid off after two big whiffs by Rimmer. Rimmer then poked the ball to center field to score Ickes and Austin Machado followed with a single to right to score Donahue as an insurance run.
In the bottom of the frame, Bodendorf faced the heart of the order for UCD, but induced groundouts by Mark Wolbert and Nick Leehey and struck out Riley Acosta to end it.
Davis (15-13, 5-6) led 2-0 through four innings but UH ate into the lead with a sacrifice fly by Ickes once Ben Zeigler-Namoa, Dallas Duarte and Jared Quandt all reached to load the bases.
UH drew even in the eighth when Donahue hit a one-out single and advanced two bases on an error charged to Wooldridge. He came home on a groundout by Jake Tsukada.
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.
