The Hawaii baseball team did not waste time or opportunities in Monday night’s 3-2 victory over Seton Hall.

In the briefest game of their season (2 hours, 8 minutes), the Rainbows relied on clutch hitting and gritty pitching to split the four-game series at Les Murakami Stadium.

Kekai Rios and Adam Fogel hit solo home runs to account for half of the ’Bows’ four hits.

“Bombs win ballgames sometimes,” said right-hander Neil Uskali, who allowed two runs — one earned — in six innings to improve to 4-1.

Fogel’s third homer of the season broke a 2-all tie in the sixth inning.

“To be completely honest, the swing wasn’t feeling too good,” Fogel said. “I’ve been getting a lot of off-speed (pitches). We faced that same guy (Ryan McLinskey) the other day. He threw another curveball. He hung this one. I said, ‘I’m swinging his first-pitch curveball if I get it,’ and sure enough, it was hung. I put a good enough swing on it to barely get it out.”

Fogel’s drive cleared the wall in left-center field. Of Fogel’s 27 hits this season, 15 have gone for extra bases.

Logan Pouelsen, who was making his second relief appearance after four starts, pitched two scoreless innings. With one out in the eighth, he fell behind 3-1 to shortstop Al Molina, one of the Pirates’ best contact hitters. But Molina whiffed on the next two fastballs for Pouelsen’s second strikeout.

Dylan Thomas pitched a hitless ninth for his sixth save. All nine of Thomas’ pitches were sliders.

“It’s fun for me out there,” Thomas said.

Uskali had a rugged first two innings that nearly led to an early exit. Uskali’s first pitch was at 6:37 p.m. The first run came three seconds later on Rob Dadona’s leadoff homer. In the first two innings, Uskali allowed four hits while throwing 40 pitches.

“He got in that mode he’s been in a few starts now where all he wants to do is throw hard — and he doesn’t throw hard,” UH coach Mike Trapasso said. “If he’s going to throw hard, he’s going to touch 90 (mph). While 90 to the layman is throwing gas, for a right-handed pitcher, it’s an average fastball. And when it’s not located, it’s a below-average fastball. He’s a sinker-slider-changeup guy, and all of a sudden I was ready to make a move in the second inning.”

Trapasso ordered Uskali to throw to the cup — the lower part of the strike zone — or “you’re going to have a hard time getting guys out from the bench.”

After the game, Uskali said: “I probably was missing up in the zone, trying to do too much.”

The next four innings, Uskali attacked the bottom of the strike zone with a two-seam fastball that set up his secondary pitches. He allowed two hits the rest of his outing, retiring 11 in a row during one stretch.

“He put together probably the best four innings of the season for him,” Trapasso said of Uskali. “Every fastball he threw was in the cup or below. When he does that, because of the sink he’s got with the two-seamer, he is very effective down in the zone.”

Uskali said he benefited from home plate umpire Shawn Rakos’ wide zone.

“The umpire was giving me a little off the plate, and I was taking advantage of that,” Uskali said

Rios said he took advantage of a rare mistake pitch from Seton Hall’s Tyler Burnham. Rios said Burnham “made me look silly” on two pitches preceding his home run. “I know I caught it square,” Rios said of the pitch he deposited over the wall in left-center to break a 1-all tie in the fourth. It was the first homer Burnham allowed this season.