Texas wins Hawaii series

HONOLULU (KXAN) - On Sunday Afternoon the No. 6 Texas Longhorns won the rubber match in Hawaii over the Rainbows 4-3. The Longhorns improved to 5-3 on the season behind a great effort by junior Sam Stafford. The left-hander struck out 10 in 5 1/3 innings and Stafford earned his first career win.

“It was a hard fought game,” Garrido said. “After last night’s 15-inning game, both teams were a little short on pitching. Hawaii is a good team and they did not quit all series. Every time we scored, they responded.”

Hawaii left 12 men on base in the loss. They had bases loaded in the fourth inning, when Stafford fought back to strike out George looking and Kitamura and Almadova swinging. He continued his dominance by also striking out the side in the fifth inning.

“I got in a tight spot,” Stafford said. “I just had to remember I have a strong defense behind me and I just worked on throwing good pitches. I walked a few more guys than I would like to today, but I felt I was attacking the hitters.”

The Longhorns were cruising towards another shutout up 4-0 in the eighth inning, until Hawaii's Jeffrey Van Doornum reached on a fielding error by Jordan Etier. Two batters later Pi'ikea Kitamura hit the team’s first homerun of the season to make it 4-2.

Hawaii's comeback continued in the ninth. With Hoby Milner pitching for Texas, Kolten Wong singled to leftfield after Zack Swasney walked to start the inning. Sean Montplaisir’s sac bunt went all wrong forcing Wong out at third. After that a fielding error by Erich Weiss loaded the bases, the Rainbows scored on a single to left field by Van Doorum. However Texas got out of the mess when Nuncio came out of the bullpen for the Longhorns and got a game-ending, line-drive 1-3 double play.

“The last pitch was supposed to be in the dirt,” Nuncio said. “But it got up a bit and he was able to get the bat on it. It was a pretty hard shot. Once I gloved it I just had to figure out which bases was easiest to throw to for the second out.”

Texas (5-3) next plays No. 12 Stanford (4-3) in a weekend series in Austin beginning on Friday at 3 P.M.