Coming off series win, UH looks to keep rolling

After ending the home schedule with a highlight moment, the University of Hawaii softball team will finish the season in the Big West spotlight.

The Rainbow Wahine (23-28, 7-11 Big West) close a rocky campaign at Long Beach State (30-19, 10-8) in a three-game series starting today in Long Beach, Calif. The opener at LBSU Softball Complex is scheduled for noon. Saturday’s season-ending doubleheader will be broadcast on ESPN3, with the first game set for 9 a.m.

UH will finish below .500 for the second time in the past three years, but is coming off a series win over Cal Poly punctuated by freshman Nicole Lopez’s walk-off home run. The Wahine will be part of a high-stakes weekend in Long Beach.

“This past weekend was a little bit of a vindication of our season,” UH coach Bob Coolen said of the Cal Poly series. “It definitely showed where our potential could be.”

Cal State Fullerton (41-13, 15-3) clinched the Big West title and the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament last week. Long Beach State is in third place, but is 36th in the NCAA RPI, and the 49ers’ hopes of an at-large bid to the regionals hinge on the next two days. The Big West last sent two teams to the NCAA regionals in 2011.

Although the postseason has been out of reach for quite some time, the Rainbow Wahine are looking to roll last week’s rousing finish into the season’s closing series.

All three games against Cal Poly were decided by one run. UH rallied for three runs with two out in the bottom of the seventh inning in the opener and the Wahine claimed a senior day win on Lopez’s eighth-inning homer.

“I think it’s better late than never to finally put everything together and come out winning the series,” Lopez said. “I think that week was good fire for us to bring into this last series.”

Lopez said she’d ended lopsided games in high school with a home run to bring the run-rule into effect, but Saturday’s shot was the first game-winner of her softball career. Since then, she said she watched replays of the moment “only a couple times,” and got to see angles she missed while circling the bases.

“Seeing the faces of my teammates, that was an incredible feeling,” she said.

Lopez entered the final weekend hitting .287, one point behind senior right fielder Keiki Carlos for the team lead.

UH sophomore Brittany Hitchcock enters the series as the reigning Big West pitcher of the week and with a 1.46 earned-run average in conference play. She leads the nation in walks allowed with just seven in 164 innings.