Someone forgot to tell the University of Hawaii baseball team this home finale didn’t mean anything.

And their fans didn’t get the memo, either. There were 3,452 of them packing Les Murakami Stadium on Saturday for senior night, the second-largest crowd of the season, just 101 fewer than for the season opener against Oregon.

They made their way through the turnstiles even though this game against Nevada had — on paper, anyway — no bearing on UH’s chances in next week’s WAC tournament. Even though the Rainbows lost Friday, eliminating their chance for first or second place and the first-round tourney bye that comes with it.

Hawaii sports fans are notorious for withholding full support (i.e., going to the game) at the first sniff of despair. Not UH baseball fans, though. It would’ve been easy for a lot of them to check out after Friday’s disappointing loss. Stay home and watch it on TV, or do something else.

But they showed up, big-time.

And so did the Rainbows themselves, winning 8-3.

They played inspired baseball against a team that had more at stake in the standings. With a win, Nevada would have become the outright WAC regular-season champion, and clinched that first-round bye in the tournament.

Jon Flinn and Riley Welch had to give coach Mike Trapasso the idea that he’s got two more arms he can count on next week.

For one of the few times this season, the entire lineup produced … and it delivered a knockout punch, still hitting, still running in the eighth inning with a 6-3 lead.

The Rainbows were even entertaining when they fell behind 2-0 in the top of the third. Third baseman Collin Bennett, one of eight seniors honored after the game, channeled Brooks Robinson with a diving stop — before throwing the ball away. He atoned immediately, catching a pop foul with his back to the plate, ending the inning.

Max Duval gave me more to like than his nifty glove work at first and old-school walk-up song — Cheap Trick’s "Surrender." He had the Wolf Pack waving the white flag, with the first hit to key the six-run second, and an RBI double to the gap in the eighth.

The concourse had that feel-good buzz (and not just at the beer lines).

"I say it’s a big game. To me, of all the WAC teams, Nevada is a big rival, so tonight’s a really big game," said Evan Murakami (no relation to Les) of Palolo, who has been coming to UH baseball games since 1987. He even remembers the first one was a 13-2 win over Cornell.

Bobbie Brodhead, a fan from "the quarry time," missed just three games this year, because she had a class reunion on the mainland. I’ve got my WAC shirt on because this is our last WAC game. And our saying tonight is there’s nothing going on until Aug. 24. That’s when volleyball starts."

So now the Rainbows get to head to Mesa, Ariz., with some momentum. They won’t have the bye, but they’ll have Matt Sisto and David Longville back to pitch, and hopefully Brent Harrison, too. They’ve got the deepest quality pitching in the conference, and that’s huge in a double-elimination tournament, where it’s easy to run out of arms.

Even if you discount all of that, the home finale was a great show, almost as stirring as last year’s miraculous walk-off win against San Jose State for the last at the Les in 2011. Especially for a game that supposedly didn’t mean anything.

"It’s baseball, and it’s senior night," said Glen Higa of Kalihi. "That’s good enough for me."