Two hits (or lack thereof) were the difference between a sweep and a series loss.

A second consecutive 50-50 game went the way of Long Beach State, which scored a critical series win for its NCAA tournament at-large hopes with another last-inning win over Hawaii on Sunday.

A Les Murakami Stadium crowd of 848 saw the Dirtbags convert a leadoff double in the top of the ninth inning into the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly to hand the Rainbow Warriors a 4-3 loss.

Hawaii (19-25, 8-10 Big West), which squandered three different opportunities to walk-off with a win in Saturday’s 11-4 12-inning defeat, left four runners in scoring position over the final four innings on Sunday. UH had men on second and third with one out in the seventh inning and failed to convert and stranded Johnny Weeks at second base in the ninth inning when Austin McGeorge (1-0) got Eric Ramirez to ground out to first.

“Not getting a hit. That’s all there was to it,” Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said.

The Dirtbags (28-18, 11-7), ranked No. 24 by Collegiate Baseball, were on life support after dropping the opener on Friday. They responded with two wins in games that were tied in the ninth inning and moved into sole possession of second place in the conference after another whacky weekend.

With No. 15 UC Santa Barbara losing a series to bottom-feeder UC Davis and Cal Poly getting swept by Cal State Northridge, it’s up to Long Beach State to make the conference a three-bid league.

The Dirtbags end the season with series against San Jose State, UC Davis and Cal State Fullerton and couldn’t afford to drop the series in Hawaii to keep it’s at-large hopes alive in case it can’t catch league-leading Fullerton.

“You get to this time of year and you have to take care of business,” Long Beach State coach Troy Buckley said. “(Hawaii) is much better than when it entered the Big West and year-to-year has gotten better and better. To lose on Friday and then come back and win two, you can say that you saved your season because of that.”

Without much left in the bullpen, Trapasso needed a gutsy effort from junior Brendan Hornung, who pitched for the first time since dropping from first to third in the rotation.

Hornung got off to a shaky start allowing runs in the first two innings and allowed a season-high 13 hits but managed the game with no walks and six strikeouts to give UH eight important innings.

“We really worked on getting the changeup going again because it hasn’t been great over my last three starts,” Hornung said. “I threw it a lot — maybe even half of the time it felt like — and I had great command of it.”

Long Beach State took a 1-0 lead on the first at-bat of the game. Jarren Duran lifted a routine fly ball to left that Marcus Doi couldn’t pick up in the sky. It dropped for a double and then Doi rushed a throw back that rolled all the way through the infield and into the Long Beach dugout, allowing Duran to score.

Hornung gave up the first of two triples to Garrett Hampson in the first inning but struck out the final two batters to strand him at third. LBSU tagged him for three more hits in the second inning but Ramirez got an out at home on a squeeze attempt and Hornung struck out the last two batters again to limit the damage to one run.

Hampson tripled and scored in the fifth inning for a 3-0 lead and Hornung bared down to scatter three more hits over the final three innings in a 111-pitch effort.

“It was a really incredible outing when in reality he only gave up two runs when our left fielder basically makes two errors on the first batter of the game,” Trapasso said. “That was as gutty of a performance I’ve seen. We knew we were on fumes in the pen because of last night and he had to be efficient so we threw a lot of hittable pitches and they got a lot of hits but he made great pitches to get out of jams.”

Long Beach State starter Tanner Brown took a shutout into the sixth inning but failed to record another out as Hawaii strung together four straight hits. Ramirez’s leadoff double was followed by Doi’s triple for the first run and Ethan Lopez extended his hitting streak to 10 game with a knock to score Doi to make it 3-2.

Lopez advanced to third with one out and beat a throw home on a groundout to first to tie it at 3-3.

Lawrence Chew (0-4), who earned a three-inning save on Friday, gave up a leadoff double in the ninth inning to pinch hitter Domenic Colacchio and pinch runner Zack Rivera scored the winning run on a sacrifice fly.

McGeorge shut out Hawaii over the final four innings to earn the win.

“We’re not real deep and if it was Friday night I wouldn’t have (pitched McGeorge that long),” Buckley said. “The whole series was kind of funky and we needed that.”

Saturday’s late game

Hawaii rallied for two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning but gave up seven in the top of the 12th inning to lose 11-4 to Long Beach State in a game that ended after the Star-Advertiser’s print deadline.

The 4-hour, 54-minute marathon was the second-longest game in program history, trailing only a 1994 game at San Diego State that went 5 hours, 19 minutes.

Daniel Jackson hit a two-run double and Garrett Nelson added a three-run homer off Hawaii reliever Kyle Mitchell (1-1), who gave up all seven runs.

Matt LoCoco went 3-for-6 with two RBIs and drove in the tying run in the ninth inning. Josh Rojas added three hits and Ethan Lopez was 3-for-4 with a triple, walk, two runs and an RBI.

UH had the winning run on second with no outs in the bottom of the 11th inning and couldn’t score.

BIG WEST BASEBALL

*—overall record includes tie

Saturday

Long Beach State 11, Hawaii 4, 12 inn.

Cal State Fullerton 6, UC Riverside 2

UC Santa Barbara 7, UC Davis 3

CSUN 7, Cal Poly 2 (Game 1)

CSUN 5, Cal Poly 3 (Game 2)

**UCLA 4, UC Irvine 1

**—nonconference

Sunday

Long Beach State 4, Hawaii 3

Cal State Fullerton 9, UC Riverside 2

UC Davis 13, UC Santa Barbara 3

CSUN 2, Cal Poly 1

**UCLA 5, UC Irvine 1

**—nonconference

Tuesday

**UC Davis at Sacramento State

**CSU Bakersfield at UC Santa Barbara

**Cal Poly at Fresno State

**Loyola Marymount at UC Riverside

**San Diego at UC Irvine

**—nonconference

LONG BEACH STATE 4, HAWAII 3

SUNDAY

E—Duran, McGeorge, Ramirez, Doi. DP—Hawaii 1. LOB—LBSU 9, Hawaii 10. 2B—Duran, Stotler, Colacchio, Weeks, Ramirez. 3B—Hampson 2, Doi. SH—Duran, Fitchett. SF—Domingues. SB—LoCoco. CS—Stotler.

Brown pitched to 3 batters in the sixth. WP—Hornung.

Umpires—(Plate): Gary DiFabio. (First): Kelly Gonzales. (Third): Joe Maiden. T—2:55. A—848.

LONG BEACH STATE 11, HAWAII 4, 12 INN.

SATURDAY

E—Sheldon-Collins, Rojas. DP—Hawaii 2, LOB—LBSU 16, Hawaii 11. 2B—Duran, Jackson, Lundquist, Stotler. 3B—Lopez. HR—Nelson. HBP—Fitchett. SH—Jackson, Rivera, Weeks. SF—Rasmussen. SB—Lopez. CS—Rojas.

HBP—by McCaughan (Fitchett). BK—Provencher.

Umpires—(Plate): Joe Maiden. (First): Gary DiFabio. (Third): Kelly Gonzales.

T—4:54. A—2,444