A day after experiencing a double-feature horror show, the University of Hawaii baseball team rebounded behind a matinee hero.
Neil Uskali pitched a five-hitter over 81⁄3 innings to lift the Rainbow Warriors to a 3-1 victory over UC Davis and salvage the Sunday-afternoon finale of a three-game Big West series at Les Murakami Stadium.
“I was happy with the outcome,” said Uskali, who mystified the Aggies with a restructured fastball, changeup and slider. He struck out six, walked zip and allowed a run on a debatable balk. He threw first-pitch strikes to 20 of 33 batters.
It had been a pillow-punching night for the ’Bows following blowout losses on Saturday.
“We were really bad, and we picked a bad day to be bad because we played two games,” said Mike Trapasso, who pored through videos of the doubleheader. “That wasn’t us. I told our guys before the game: ‘Is this the start of a demise or just a bad day?’ I said it tongue-in-cheek. We know we’re a good club. But we knew we had to go back to basics. It started with Neil.”
Trapasso estimated that about 85 percent of the Aggies’ hits on Saturday were on pitches high in the strike zone or down the middle. Uskali was instructed to pitch low and precise to the corners. “Against a team like that, he has to be able to throw any pitch in any count,” Trapasso said.
Three weeks ago, Uskali altered his fastball to a two-seam grip. The result was a more downward spin than his four-seam pitch. “His fastball has more life to it now,” Trapasso said. “Even if he doesn’t command it to exactly where he wants, it has a little sink and he can induce a ground ball on a pitch that is catching more middle than you want.”
With runners at the corners in the fourth, Uskali was called for a balk because he looked at third while set, allowing the tying run to score. The next batter flied out to deep left, but Uskali still appeared to be miffed about the ruling.
Trapasso went to the mound and told Uskali: “There’s not a whole lot you can do about it, dude. It’s past. You can’t let it bother you.”
After that, Uskali did not allow a hit until Ryan Hooper’s one-out single in the ninth. Uskali exited after that.
Hooper then went to second on Alex Aguiar’s single off closer Dylan Thomas. Pinch hitter Ignacio Garcia hit a chopper that skipped off a seam. Shortstop Jordan LaFave fielded the ball at smile level, stepped on second and fired to Eric Ramirez to complete the game-ending double play.
“That play was anything but routine,” Trapasso said. “That was a play that 80 percent of the time goes bouncing off the glove and into the outfield. It really took a funky hop, but he made a nice play. LaFave won the game for us.”
LaFave officially was 0-for-3 with three strikeouts. But he drove in the go-ahead run with a sacrifice fly to right in the fourth.
“I knew I wasn’t going to go down again,” LaFave said. “The bases were loaded, and we needed a run. I got a (slider) up, and I put a good swing on it.”
