Punahou beats Saint Louis to close in on MPI in ILH baseball

Punahou is one win away from forcing a playoff against Mid-Pacific for the ILH regular-season baseball title.

Ryan Nishi’s three-run triple helped the fourth-ranked Buffanblu score 12 runs in the first two innings before holding on for a 12-8 win over Saint Louis on Wednesday night at Hans L’Orange Park.

Kyson Donahue went 2-for-3 with two walks, two runs scored and an RBI and recorded the final three outs on strikeouts on the mound for the Buffanblu (11-3), who won for the second time in as many days to keep their regular-season hopes alive.

Punahou has to beat ‘Iolani (10-3-1) on Friday to force a playoff against No. 3 Mid-Pacific (12-3), which hasn’t played in a week.

The game will be resumed with ‘Iolani leading 7-2 in the bottom of the second inning after play was suspended last Friday due to weather.

Both of Punahou’s wins this week were in games that had to be made up due to the weather. The ILH regular season was supposed to end last week.

Punahou used five different pitchers in the game against Saint Louis. Ace Kahi Bisho came in for the fifth inning to try to nail down a 12-2 mercy-rule win, but gave up three runs in 2⁄3 innings.

Nishi finished with four RBIs and Jake Tsukada, Kade Morihara, Kirk Terada-Herzer and Kalae Harrison all scored twice for Punahou.