On a windy Friday afternoon, the UC Santa Barbara baseball team breezed to an 8-2 victory over Hawaii at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium on the UCSB campus.
A crowd of 379 witnessed the Gauchos ride a six-run second inning to take the opener of the three-game series and improve to 19-10 and 6-4 in the Big West. The ’Bows fell to 19-12 and 4-6.
The status for the second game will not be decided until this morning. With a storm looming on California’s Central Coast, officials will determine whether the game will be reset from today’s scheduled 3:05 p.m local time start or rolled into a doubleheader on Sunday.
“We’ll see how the storm develops,” UH coach Rich Hill said in a telephone interview on Friday night. “We’ll touch base in the morning with their coaching staff, and make a decision the best we can. We’re here in the hotel, so we’re ready to play at 10 o’clock at night, 8 in the morning. We’re all good.”
Hill tweaked the pitching rotation, with left-hander Randy Abshier making his first career start in a series opener.
After a 1-2-3 first inning, Abshier allowed the first eight Gauchos to reach base in the second. Justin Trimble’s two-run double and Ivan Brethowr’s two-run homer were the big hits as the Gauchos broke away to a 6-0 lead. But three of the hits were wind-aided bloopers that would have been caught in normal conditions. Abshier retired the final three batters, stranding two Gauchos in the second. Abshier allowed one hit the next 3 1⁄3 innings.
During the Gaucho’s second-inning surge, Hill visited Abshier on the mound.
“I told him he was doing a great job,” Hill said. “Those bloop singles, wind-aided base hits, were out of his control.”
After the game, Hill said: “I thought Randy was awesome. It’s weird for me to say this, but that was probably his best outing, in my opinion, since he’s been a Rainbow Warrior. The fact that he was able to get six (potential) outs in that inning and continue on and roll zeros and come out in the sixth was pure guts. That’s what I love, and that’s what I want this program to embody more than striking guys out or hitting home runs.”
The ’Bows closed to 6-2 on Matthew Miura’s solo home run in the fourth inning and Jake Tsukada’s RBI single in the fifth. But Trimble’s two-run double restored the Gauchos’ six-run advantage in the seventh.
Ryan Gallagher, a sophomore, allowed two runs and had a career-high 12 strikeouts to earn the victory. His 117 pitches, 78 of them for strikes, were his most in his 20 career starts with the Gauchos.
“He was the Big West Freshman of the Year a couple years ago,” Hill said of Gallagher, who redshirted as a true sophomore last year. “He’s the Friday guy on one of the best staffs in the country for a reason.”
Hill said Gallagher relied on “changeup, changeup, changeup, We really didn’t have an answer for it. We knew what we were going to get, and we got it, and you’ve got to tip your cap to Gallagher.”
In the ninth, the ’Bows loaded the bases with two two-out singles and a hit batsman. But Brady Huddlestun induced Tsukada to hit a game-ending groundout. Huddlestun has not allowed a run in five appearances this season.
