With only Cal State Fullerton left on its home schedule, the Hawaii baseball team has won two-thirds of its Big West Conference games at Les Murakami Stadium.

That’s good enough to contend in the league. An 0-6 record away from home is what has derailed the 2015 season.

After destroying Pepperdine 15-8 in their first road game of the year, the Rainbow Warriors (15-26, 6-9) are 1-12 away from home since. Eight of those defeats are by two runs or less and three of those came after holding a lead in the sixth inning.

The two crippling losses were three weeks ago at Cal Poly when Hawaii led 5-0 in the fifth inning in Game 1 and 2-0 in the seventh inning of Game 2 and came away empty both times.

Hawaii’s first five road loses in conference were by a total of eight runs.

"Honestly, our struggles on the road haven’t been because we didn’t play well," Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said after Sunday’s 5-0 loss to UC Santa Barbara. "Outside of (the Pepperdine series) on the road, we’ve played well but we haven’t been able to get that belief late in games to holds leads or retake leads."

A lot of that has been cured with the emergence of sophomore Quintin Torres-Costa as closer. In Hawaii’s only win against UC Santa Barbara, Torres-Costa finished off a gem by reigning Big West pitcher of the week Tyler Brashears, nailing down the final four outs in a 1-0 victory.

It was the only run UH scored in the series and over its past six games against the top two pitching teams in the league, Hawaii is averaging only two runs and 4.5 hits per game.

The Dirtbags (23-17, 8-7) rank third in the BWC with a 2.78 ERA behind UCSB, which leads the country, and Cal State Northridge.

Freshman right-hander Chris Mathewson, not UCSB’s Dillon Tate, leads the Big West with a 1.42 ERA and has allowed only 40 hits in 631⁄3 innings.

It’s a crucial series for the Dirtbags, who are six games over .500 overall and boast an RPI of 53 heading into the weekend’s games.

LBSU is one of four Big West teams with at-large regional hopes heading into the final month of the season, but a series loss to Hawaii, which is last in the league with an RPI of 230, would do serious damage.

UH is out of the postseason running but has already matched its win total in conference play from last season.

"We’ve still got a lot to play for. We’ve got a month to go and we’d love to try to get to where we’re .500 or better in league," Trapasso said. "That would be a great accomplishment for us because we haven’t been anywhere close to that."

UH closes with last-place UC Riverside on the road next week before hosting the Titans in its final home series.

"We’re hanging in there," Trapasso said. "(We) went 3-3 on the homestand against two very good pitching staffs and we need to go on the road and duplicate the way we’ve been playing at home."

Hawaii has given up six total runs in the past four games started by either Brashears or L.J. Brewster.

Senior lefty Jarrett Arakawa has lost his past three starts and given up 13 runs and 19 hits in 111⁄3 innings but will remain in the rotation and start Sunday.

"I’ve got to be better next week," Arakawa said after giving up nine hits in 31⁄3 innings against UCSB. "The road has kind of been a struggle, but at this point in the year, we need to embrace it and try to to turn things around."