Bye-bye, bye

Hawaii will honor eight seniors after tonight’s regular-season baseball finale against Nevada.

As for UH defending its Western Athletic Conference regular-season title, however, the Wolf Pack had other ideas.

Kamehameha alumnus Kewby Meyer drove in the winning run on a sacrifice fly in the top of the 10th inning as Nevada pulled out a 4-2 win over Hawaii to clinch a share of the conference championship on Friday night.

A sold-out Les Murakami Stadium crowd of 3,363 saw the Rainbows (29-23, 9-8) put the winning run on second in the bottom of the ninth.

After Garrett Champion singled and Stephen Ventimila walked with two outs, Nevada coach Gary Powers brought in lefty Elliot Van Gaver, who struck out the left-handed-hitting Kaeo Aliviado on three pitches.

Hawaii, now 3-4 in extra-inning games, can finish no better than third and will open the WAC tournament on Wednesday in Mesa, Ariz.

"It’s a broken record, but we’ve got to score more," Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said. "We’re now in a situation where we know what the situation is (for the WAC tournament), so we’ll staff the game (tonight)."

The Rainbows will be either the third or fourth seed in the tournament.

Nevada (31-22, 11-6) can win the outright title and earn the No. 1 seed with a win tonight.

Lose, and the Wolf Pack share the crown with Sacramento State, which would get the tiebreaker, having won two of three head-to-head.

That was of little concern to Trapasso, who got nearly everything he could ask for out of a depleted pitching staff.

Already without starter Matt Sisto and reliever David Longville, Trapasso was missing closer Brent Harrison, who suffered pain in his throwing elbow warming up on Thursday. He was scheduled to have an MRI late Friday night.

"I don’t think there’s any structural (damage) because he didn’t feel a pop or anything, but he felt it warming up … and couldn’t go," Trapasso said.

Freshmen Scott Squier, Kyle Dowdy and Lawrence Chew held Nevada, which is hitting .291 as a team, to two runs over nine innings.

Squier, who was 0-3 with a 4.22 ERA in five WAC starts, gave the Rainbows five innings of work for the first time in more than a month, allowing two runs on four hits with one walk and five strikeouts.

Dowdy retired six in a row before a leadoff walk in the eighth and Chew pitched out of two-on, none-out jam in the eighth and struck out two of the three batters he faced in the ninth to give UH’s offense a chance to win it.

"I don’t think we could ask anything more (of them), there’s no question about that," Trapasso said. "I’m proud of our whole team because they played their butts off but just weren’t getting the hits when they needed to."

After Meyer’s sacrifice fly put Nevada up 3-2, Brooks Klein doubled and Garrett Yrigoyen singled off Jesse Moore to add an insurance run.

Pi‘ikea Kitamura singled to start the 10th and Breland Almadova drew a two-out walk to put the tying run at first. Nevada closer Matt Gardner earned his 13th save, striking out Trevor Podratz to end it.

Chew (2-3) took the loss, giving up two runs on three hits in 22⁄3 innings with no walks and three strikeouts.

Van Gaver (2-0) earned the win in relief of starter Tom Jameson, who allowed both UH runs on five hits in six innings with five walks and four strikeouts.

"We weren’t able to take advantage of Jameson on a night where I thought he wasn’t able to throw his breaking pitches for strikes," Trapasso said.

Kitamura finished 2-for-4 with an RBI and Aliviado doubled and scored in the first.

Almadova singled and walked three times and Zack Swasey had two of UH’s eight hits.

Junior Jon Flinn (1-1, 5.11 ERA) will start for UH tonight.