The eighth inning has turned out to be the decisive frame the past two nights at Les Murakami Stadium.

Hawaii got the better of it with three runs on Friday night, only for Cal Poly to score the winning run on Kyle Marinconz’s two-out hit Saturday to pull out a 5-4 victory and even the series at a game apiece.

The red-hot Rainbow Warriors (17-16, 6-2 Big West) were slowed down by Marinconz’s fourth hit of the game with runners on first and second.

Matt LoCoco had a chance to gun down Brett Binning at the plate and made a perfect throw in plenty of time.

Hawaii catcher Kekai Rios got the tag down in time but never corralled the ball, which sat helplessly on the dirt just a few feet from where the winning run crossed for the Mustangs (20-13, 3-2).

Hawaii had a four-game winning streak snapped and lost for just the fourth time in its past 15 games to drop into a first-place tie with Cal State Fullerton before a crowd of 2,596.

“We’ve been pulling those games out because we were doing the little things correctly and we didn’t do that tonight,” Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso said. “People look at the dropped ball by Kekai, but that had nothing to do with the two-out walk and the hit batsman.”

Senior Lawrence Chew (0-2) gave Hawaii a chance to win it, bailing out starter Kyle Von Ruden, who worked a season-low 32⁄3 innings and gave up four runs on eight hits.

The left-hander from Mid-Pacific gave up only one hit in four innings before Marinconz dropped a single into shallow center. Three straight Mustangs reached base with two outs.

“I had a four-pitch walk and I can’t be doing that,” said Chew, who has gone at least four innings in three of his past four outings. “I had the next hitter 0-2 and ended up hooking a slider too much and hitting him in the back foot and the last batter, got him to two strikes, made a decent pitch and we had a play at the plate but couldn’t get it.”

Hawaii finished with 12 hits and had the tying run in scoring position in the final two frames.

Freshman left-hander Justin Bruihl (1-2) gave up consecutive two-out hits, but worked out of the eighth by getting Josh Rojas to foul out to left.

LoCoco led off the ninth with his second hit and was on second with one out. Freshman Spencer Howard relieved Bruihl and got Jacob Sheldon-Collins, the Big West’s leading hitter, to pop out to short and Marcus Doi to ground out to second to end it for his first save.

“We came back with all of those hits and runs and I was confident we were going to come all the way back with the tying runner on second base and the league’s best hitter up, but so what, next pitch,” Chew said.

Von Ruden snapped a string of seven consecutive starts pitching at least seven innings.

Cal Poly’s first hit was a one-out single by Kevin Morgan in the second that drilled Von Ruden in the middle two fingers of his pitching hand.

Von Ruden, who said his hand was “numb” and “just a little achy,” managed to get out of the second inning, but gave up a two-out, two-run single to Michael Sanderson in the third after hitting Brett Barbier to load the bases.

Von Ruden issued a second walk, marking just the third time in 10 starts he gave up multiple free passes in the same game, with one out in the fourth and then surrendered three straight two-out hits and left after 32⁄3 innings.

“His two middle fingers were swelling up pretty quickly and he kept going out there, but by the time I took the last trip out there they were pretty swollen and kind of numb,” Trapasso said. “Chewy pitched his heart out and pitched well, but the tough thing about baseball is you can come away thinking you really pitched well but those two freebies, two outs, nobody on hurt us.”

Sheldon-Collins doubled and scored in the fifth inning to extend his hitting streak to nine games. Johnny Weeks had three hits, Eric Ramirez went 2-for-3 with two walks, two runs and an RBI and LoCoco was 2-for-4 with an RBI.

The rubber game of the series is today at 1:05.

BIG WEST BASEBALL

SATURDAY

CAL POLY 5, HAWAII 4

LONG BEACH STATE 8, UC IRVINE 3

UC SANTA BARBARA 5, CSUN 4

CAL STATE FULLERTON 3, UC DAVIS 2

**UTAH 9, UC RIVERSIDE 8

TODAY

CAL POLY AT HAWAII, 1 P.M. HST

UC IRVINE AT LONG BEACH STATE

CSUN AT UC SANTA BARBARA

UC DAVIS AT CAL STATE FULLERTON

**UC RIVERSIDE AT UTAH

*–OVERALL RECORD INCLUDES TIE

**–NONCONFERENCE

CAL POLY 5, HAWAI 4

E–MCKENNA, MARINCONZ. 2B–MARINCONZ 2, SHELDON-COLLINS. DP–CAL POLY 2. LOB–CAL POLY 10, HAWAII 10. HBP–BARBIER, MCKENNA, LOCOCO. SH–WEEKS.

WP-VON RUDEN. HBP–BY UELMEN (LOCOCO), BY VON RUDEN (BARBIER), BY CHEW (MCKENNA). UMPIRES–(PLATE): JIM HARMON. (FIRST): CHUCK BECKER. (THIRD): ADAM DOWDY. T–3:02. A–2,596.