Beach holds back ‘Bows

Back to the Big West meant more of the same for the Hawaii baseball team.

Fresh off four straight wins during their bye week in conference play, the Rainbow Warriors were held to one run or fewer for the fourth time in their past six Big West games as Long Beach State pulled out a 3-1 victory Friday night.

A Les Murakami Stadium crowd of 1,710 watched Scott Squier walk Richard Prigatano with the bases loaded to force in the game-winning run in the top of the ninth inning.

Long Beach State scored another run on a bases-loaded walk with two outs as Juliene Jones threw four straight balls to walk Johnny Bekakis after replacing Squier.

"We haven’t done that in a long time," Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said. "We rarely ever get beat by not throwing strikes."

Sophomore Andrew Rohrbach (6-1) pitched his second consecutive complete game for Long Beach State (24-23, 10-6), which still has postseason aspirations after winning its previous three series against UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly and Cal State Fullerton.

Rohrbach tied a career high with nine strikeouts and allowed one run on five hits with two walks.

"For the last month we have been playing with a lot of urgency," Long Beach State coach Troy Buckley said. "(Rohrbach) has been pretty good for the last month and we need him to be good because we’re a little depleted in the bullpen and any time we can shorten the game in any capacity, we’ll be in better shape."

LBSU isn’t in quite as bad of bullpen shape as the ‘Bows, who had to bring in Squier in the top of the ninth inning after starter Matt Cooper (4-5) couldn’t continue.

Cooper allowed only four hits over eight innings and had retired 13 Dirtbags in a row before issuing a leadoff walk to Colby Brenner. He threw one more pitch to Garrett Hampson before a mound visit from Trapasso, who took him out of the game.

"I actually was thinking he’d stay in there for 10 innings if that’s what we needed, but he said he was out of gas," Trapasso said. "There is no more competitive kid on our team than Cooper and if he says he’s done, I trust that, because he wants to win more than anybody."

Cooper threw only five innings in last week’s win over New York Institute of Technology after a 132-pitch effort two weeks ago against Cal State Fullerton.

Cooper and Rohrbach, who have each thrown nine shutout innings against the Titans in the past two weeks, went toe-to-toe in another Friday night pitching duel in the Big West.

Rohrbach had given up only two infield singles and hadn’t allowed a ball to reach the outfield through 52/3 innings.

Hawaii trailed 1-0 in the bottom of the sixth when Stephen Ventimilia bunted for a base hit to lead off. After a Kalei Hanawahine bunt moved Ventimilia into scoring position, Marc Flores delivered a two-out hit off the glove of Ino Patron at first to tie the score at 1-1.

Flores, who leads the team with 39 RBIs, has hit safely in nine of his past 11 games.

"It’s pretty frustrating for all of us because Cooper has been pitching great all year and has no wins to show for it," Flores said.

Long Beach State scored its first run in the fourth inning after Hampson was thrown out trying to steal second base.

Prigatano hit a two-out triple to right-center and scored on an RBI double by Michael Hill, who hit a grounder under the glove of a diving Flores at first.

Cooper, whose ERA at home was 1.38 coming in, retired the next 13 Long Beach State hitters until that leadoff walk in the ninth.

Squier pitched out of the bullpen for the first time this year and allowed two walks and a bunt single.

Hawaii has lost 12 of its past 13 games in conference play.

E—Hampson. DP—LBSU 2. LOB—LBSU 5; Hawaii 5. 2B—Hill. 3B—Prigatano. SH—Hanawahine. SB—Ventimilia. CS—Hampson.

Umpires—(Plate): Anthony Norris. (First): Stephen Fritzoni. (Third): Jason Rogers. T—2:22. A—1,710