Cooper Walls and Isaiah Magdaleno combined on a four-hitter in Hawaii’s 1-0 baseball victory over 15th-ranked UC Santa Barbara today at Les Murakami Stadium.
A crowd of 2.141 saw the Rainbow Warriors make several acrobatic defensive plays, including right fielder Jared Quandt’s leaping catch for the final out, to claim two in this three-game series. The ’Bows improved to 14-5 overall and 3-3 in the Big West. The Gauchos (15-4 and 4-2) had won 25 Big West games in a row through Friday’s series-opening 2-1 victory. They lost the final two games against the ’Bows.
UH head coach Rich Hill opened with a freshman battery of right-handed Walls and catcher David Vergel de Dios, who was making his third start of the season. Vergel de Dios scored the game’s only run in the third inning when he singled, went to third on Ben Zeigler-Namoa’s single, and came home when Quandt pulled a hit to right.
“You wear the Hawaii uniform, it doesn’t really matter what class you’re in or how much scholarship you have,” UH coach Rich Hill said of the first-year ’Bows. “Everybody’s expected to go level 10 in terms of their effort, attitude and enthusiasm. We don’t see scholarship numbers and classes. We just see who’s going to perform, and get it done.”
Walls allowed four hits in seven innings to improve to 2-0.
Magdaleno, who threw 48 pitches in three scoreless innings on Saturday, came back to pitch two innings for his third save. He threw strikes on 14 of his 19 pitches.
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“He went right back to the drawing board this summer after last spring,” Hill said of Magdaleno. “He went to the Pacific Northwest (summer league), did really well, and has really taken to Hawaii in general and the University of Hawaii. You can see it in his confidence. He’s a big, strong-bodied kid. He’s very durable. He can go a lot of innings.”
