On ’80s-themed night, Washington State’s Collin Montez was into the groove.
Left-swinging Montez smacked two titanic home runs in Thursday night’s 6-2 baseball victory over Hawaii at Les Murakami Stadium.
A crowd of 842 saw Montez smack a two-run homer in the Cougars’ three-run first inning and then pound a three-run drive in the third.
Both drives rode 25-mph gusts over the wall in right field.
“I don’t know if you can call them wind-aided when they got out that far,” UH coach Mike Trapasso said.
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The Cougars took a lead when Justin Van De Brake scooted home on a grounder to right-handed pitcher Logan Pouelsen’s left side. With Kyle Manzardo on second with two outs, Pouelsen threw a change-up that Montez mashed.
“I thought it was elevated a tad, but I don’t think it was a terrible pitch,” Trapasso said. “Logan thought it was a decent pitch.”
Montez had entered hitting .143, with singles accounting for both of his hits. But during practices this week, he focused on the contact point of his swings.
“We’ve been telling ourselves all week to get the head (of the bat) out, get the barrel out,” Montez said. “And that’s what I was trying to do. I got the ball a little out in front. I’d like to say the wind helped it a little bit.”
In the third inning, Pouelsen retired the first two Cougars, then plunked Manzardo with a 1-0 pitch. Jack Smith followed with an opposite-field single to right, bringing up Montez for the second time.
This time, Montez drove Pouelsen’s fastball well over right fielder Scotty Scott’s head for a 6-0 lead.
“The second one was gone, no doubt about it,” Montez said. “I felt it. … It feels, when you swing, like nothing. When (you) feel that nothing … yeah, that’s it.”
Trapasso said: “That second pitch was just a bad pitch. It was an elevated fastball. It was really high. It was a five spot up in his eyes almost, and (Montez) just crushed it. (Pouelsen is) not going to be that way very often. Logan is not going to struggle like that. It wasn’t his night.”
But Trapasso said it was a self-inflicted mistake — the hit by pitch — that gave the Cougars extended life in the third inning.
“The reality is Montez shouldn’t have been up in the third inning,” Trapasso said. “We’ve two outs and nobody on, and we gave them a freebie with the hit by pitch. Then the single, and a bomb. If we finished that inning, who knows what happens with Montez in the fourth. But tip your hat. We got hammered on two pitches, and we weren’t able to come back from that.”
The ’Bows did cobble two runs in the bottom of the third, and their relievers pitched five scoreless innings.
Tai Atkins, who was named after the Mai Tai Bar, which is about to close for good in Ala Moana Center, had a smooth mixture of two- and four-seam fastballs. In four innings, Atkins allowed three hits and struck out seven. He allowed only one runner to reach scoring position. Atkins threw strikes on 42 of 62 pitches.
“I was constantly getting out in front with the extension,” said Atkins, who was the state’s 2019 Player of the Year as a Kamehameha-Hawaii senior. “I was focusing on getting the ball out. Two-seam was just running. Mixed in the four-seamer to have it flat.”
Carter Loewen pitched a scoreless ninth inning for UH. Nate Swarts reached on a catcher’s interference, stole second and went to third on Garrett Gouldsmith’s groundout to first. But Loewen fanned Van De Brake for his second strikeout of the inning.