The baseball teams were willing, but Mother Nature was not, forcing a postponement of Friday’s Big West game between Hawaii and UC Riverside.

The game will be resumed today at 1:05 p.m., with the score tied 1-1 with two outs in the bottom of the third inning.

The second game of this series, which was scheduled for 6:35 p.m., will now start 30 minutes after the conclusion of the postponed game.

“It was beautiful today,” UH coach Mike Trapasso said of Friday afternoon’s weather. “And it was beautiful during (batting practice). And it was a beautiful sunset. And then all of a sudden all that beauty disappeared, and it became a perfect storm. It was really disappointing on that end.”

At 7:26 p.m., the umpires called for a delay because of heavy rain. After that, it was termed a lightning delay because of strikes within 3 miles of the UH-Manoa campus. When games are stopped because of neighboring lightning, a game cannot start until 30 minutes after the final strike. The umpires finally suspended the game after a delay of 1 hour, 16 minutes.

Trapasso said both teams were willing to wait until midnight, if necessary.

“The weather report said it was going to be like that all night,” Trapasso said. “It was a complete deluge. Is that a good word?”

Trapasso said UH starting pitcher Jackson Rees would have been able pitch again Friday if the game resumed after a delay of up to two hours. But now Rees, who threw 55 pitches in three innings, will not be available to pitch today.

“It’s disappointing, but now we’ll have to figure out how to win a game from the bullpen,” Trapasso said.

Trapasso said he is considering using Kyle Hatton, Logan Pouelsen or Kash Koltermann to start the suspended game. Trapasso said he will finalize a decision this morning.

“It’s not really a big decision, because whomever you pick has to pitch well,” Trapasso said.

Dominic DeMiero is expected to be UH’s third-game starter on Sunday.

The Rainbow Warriors had taken a 1-0 lead when shortstop Maaki Yamazaki scored from second on Pouelsen’s drive to right field. Yamazaki used a crossover slide to elude catcher Anthony Lepre’s tag and touch home plate with his right hand.

“I just rolled,” Yamazaki said. “I thought it was close. I could see the ball coming. I was trying to get away from the catcher.”

Trapasso said: “It was impressive, really. It was a good throw. It was bad luck on their part because the throw took a little bit of a funny hop as it was coming to the catcher. It might have hit the lip of the new turf at home plate. It looked like a perfect throw and he’d be out by 5 feet.”

The Highlanders tied it at 1 in the third when AJ Sawyer reached on a fielder’s choice, continued to second on Yamazaki’s throwing error, advanced to third on Rees’ wild pitch, and scored on Brenden Avventino’s RBI groundout.