UH ends BWC season with a homecoming

Hawaii’s final road trip of the season will feel a bit like home.

There should be a lot of green and white in the stands at Goodwin Field in Fullerton, Calif., where the Rainbow Warriors face league-leading Cal State Fullerton in their final Big West series starting today.

Southern California is prime recruiting territory for baseball and Hawaii has cashed in on some of that talent.

Junior right-hander Brendan Hornung grew up 15 minutes from the Titans’ stadium and freshman Ethan Lopez went to high school at La Mirada, which is 9 miles away.

Even third baseman Johnny Weeks, who grew up 45 minutes away in Long Beach, expects to have a large contingent of supporters in the stands rooting on the Rainbows.

“Being in front of friends and family it’s going to be the most important thing to play good for them and for the team,” Weeks said before boarding the bus for the airport on Wednesday. “Especially since Fullerton is on top of the standings right now it would be fun to knock them off the top.”

The 18th-ranked Titans (32-17, 14-4), who are projected to host a regional by D1baseball.com as of this week, hold a three-game lead over Long Beach State with six games to play. Fullerton could wrap up its sixth conference championship in seven years this weekend against the Rainbow Warriors (21-26, 10-11), who are 1-8 against Fullerton since joining the conference.

It looked like this series could end up meaning something three weeks into conference play when Hawaii was 6-1 and in first place. UH has lost 11 of 15 games since and needed a sweep of UC Riverside in a doubleheader last Sunday just to have a chance to avoid a losing record in conference play.

Hawaii would need to win the series to finish with a non-losing record in conference for the second straight year. UH went 12-12 last season after going 17-34 in its first two years in the league.

“We want to see how we match up against a good team like this,” said Hornung, who will start the series finale on Sunday. “There’s always some importance to every game.”

Hornung, who said his mom made a Facebook page promoting this weekend’s series months in advance, has made back-to-back quality starts since moving down to third in the pitching rotation.

Hornung (4-7, 3.32 ERA) had started the series opener for 12 consecutive weeks but was moved after getting roughed up for eight runs in a season-low four innings at UC Santa Barbara.

He pitched eight innings against Long Beach State two weeks ago with six strikeouts and picked up his fourth win of the season last Sunday against UC Riverside. He didn’t walk a batter in either of those two starts.

“The kid is a warrior and a bulldog and even when he doesn’t have his best stuff, he’s going to battle for you and get you six, seven innings,” Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said after Hornung’s outing on Sunday.

Hawaii is 9-0 when scoring at least five runs in Big West games this season, which could be tough against the Titans.

Fullerton leads the country with a 2.32 team ERA and allows the fewest hits (6.77) per nine innings of any Division I team.

Right-hander Connor Seabold (6-4, 2.27 ERA), who will oppose Hawaii’s Kyle Von Ruden in tonight’s opener, has struck out 82 in 711⁄3 innings with only seven walks.

Von Ruden (6-2, 3.08) leads Hawaii in wins and needs to pitch 3 2/3 innings to reach 100 for the season.

It would mark the third consecutive year UH had a pitcher (Matt Cooper, Tyler Brashears) throw 100 innings in a season.

Prior to 2014, UH hadn’t had a pitcher reach that mark in a single season since Steven Wright and Ian Harrington in 2006 when UH advanced to a regional.