A winning road trip and back-to-back series wins in conference are on the line today for the Hawaii baseball team.

Corey MacDonald earned his team-leading sixth win, and Marc Flores went 3-for-4 with two doubles and an RBI to help Hawaii even its series against Long Beach State with a 5-2 victory on Saturday at Blair Field in Long Beach, Calif.

Stephen Ventimilia capped a four-run second inning with a two-run single and Lawrence Chew pitched the final three innings to earn his second save for Hawaii (12-32, 7-13 Big West).

The Rainbows are 3-3 on their current road trip after winning just two of their first 12 games away from Les Murakami Stadium.

Junior Matt Cooper (2-6, 3.34 ERA) will start today’s game at 10 a.m. to try to pitch the Rainbows to their first consecutive winning series of the season.

"(Today) is a really big day because of just that," Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said. "We have a chance to do something that is very difficult to do in this league, and that’s win back-to-back road series."

MacDonald (6-5) struck out a career-high eight in six innings, giving up one run on six hits with one walk.

He hit a batter with the bases loaded to give up a run, but made pitches when they counted. Long Beach State finished 0-for-9 against MacDonald with runners in scoring position and left the bases full in the sixth.

MacDonald has recorded half of the team’s 12 wins.

"I tip my hat to Corey because he just continues to battle and give us good innings," Trapasso said. "He was kind of almost conveniently wild where he was around the zone, but it drove his pitch count up. It also put him in a position where when he’d throw that perfect pitch, it would freeze guys."

Chew, who pitched for the fourth time in six games on the current trip, gave up one run on three hits over the final three innings.

The Dirtbags (23-25, 10-10) scored their second run in the seventh inning when Chew threw the ball away trying to get a runner out at first.

Long Beach State brought the tying run to the plate with one out in the ninth, but Chew got consecutive groundouts to end the game.

"He was pitching tentative in that last inning and was kind of hoping the inning would just be over," Trapasso said. "With the last couple of hitters, he understood that he had to make it happen and threw his two best pitches to those last two guys."

The Rainbows got to LBSU starter Jack Stassi (4-3) for four runs in the second inning.

Flores extended his hitting streak to seven games and Trevor Podratz ran his to six with consecutive one-out singles to start the inning.