Hawaii baseball team hammers 2 home runs in rout of UC San Diego

For more than a week, the Hawaii baseball team has done a great job living up to its new role of spoiler.

The Rainbow Warriors stacked 19 hits, including home runs by Kyson Donahue and Austin Machado, and claimed their road series at defending champion UC San Diego with a 14-6 win at Triton Ballpark in La Jolla, Calif., on Saturday.

All nine UH players in the lineup tallied a hit and a run scored.

UH (24-15, 8-9 Big West) will go for its first road sweep of the season at 10 a.m. Hawaii time Sunday. UCSD (26-13, 13-7) fell behind the Big West leaders by three in the loss column; UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara and CSUN lead the way with 13-4 records.

Last week, UH took two of three from Cal Poly, which is still in the hunt at 14-6.

The ‘Bows have gotten some quality starts of late. San Diego native Randy Abshier (2-4) shook off a pair of solo home runs by the Tritons in the first two innings and lasted 6 1/3 innings to pick up the win.

Danny Veloz and Connor Harrison finished the job; Harrison went the final 2 1/3 for his first save of the year.

UH scored seven straight runs between the third through sixth innings to take control.

Donahue’s two-run shot in the fifth was his team-high fourth homer of the season. Machado’s two-run homer in the eighth was his third. They have half of the team’s 14 long balls this season.

Left fielder Jake Tsukada went 4-for-5, third baseman Elijah Ickes was 3-for-5 with four RBIs and center fielder Matthew Miura was 2-for-2 with three RBIs and three runs scored.

Right-hander Matthew Dalquist (5-1) went five innings and took his first loss of the season for the Tritons, who are in their final season of transitional Division I status. UCSD leadoff man Nick Costello went 3-for-5 with four RBIs.

Michael Crossland and Delshaun Lanier had the home runs for the Tritons.

Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.