When they came they were loud and in bunches.

Six of No. 3 Punahou’s seven hits went for extra bases and over just two innings, but it was enough to outlast No. 10 St. Francis 4-1 on Tuesday in an ILH baseball game at Goeas Field.

Kalae Harrison and Jake Tsukada strung together back-to-back RBI doubles in the third inning, and Makana Murashige and catcher Matt Nishimura drove in runs with consecutive doubles in the sixth inning to support three pitchers who held St. Francis to six hits.

Koa Eldredge struck out seven in 41⁄3 scoreless innings and Matt McConnell struck out Bubba Akana with runners at second and third to end it and earn the save.

“We’ve been getting timely hits,” Punahou coach Keenan Sue said. “Kalae got the first one and that kind of opened it up. The slugging percentage was good today.”

Punahou improved to 8-1 and moved past ‘Iolani (8-2) for first place. The teams will play Thursday at Goeas Field a week after ‘Iolani’s 7-2 win over Punahou at the Raiders’ field.

The Buffanblu got past a senior-heavy St. Francis squad using Eldredge, the team’s No. 3 starter, who didn’t pitch a year ago as a sophomore.

Three of his seven strikeouts came in the first two innings and were all looking as the Saints struggled to figure out Eldredge’s funky motion from the left side.

“This is the first year I’ve started to take pitching seriously,” Eldredge said. “Today I was focusing on getting my off-speed over and it’s starting to work. It was a good day to see my curveball was going for strikes.”

Reece Kadota’s one-out double chased him in the fifth inning after 83 pitches, but Ben McConnell worked out of the jam.

A single and two errors led to the Saints’ lone run in the seventh inning before Matt McConnell came in with two outs and two on and struck out Akana looking on three pitches.

The Saints, ranked in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser Top 10 for the second time ever this week, finished 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position.

“Throughout the season it seems as if we’d come up with timely hits and today I think we had six or seven standing strikeouts,” St. Francis coach Kip Akana said. “I know what our team is and we just couldn’t get those timely hits.”

The Saints played their final game against a Division I opponent and finished 4-3, with their only losses to the top three teams in the league — Punahou, ‘Iolani and Saint Louis — who are a combined 25-4 in league games.

They will only play twice in the next 23 days until the start of the three-team tournament in Division II.

“They’re a good team. They have talented players who know this game well,” Sue said.

Meanwhile the Buffanblu will play six times over the next 13 days to try to earn an automatic state berth in Division I by winning the regular season.

Eldredge will play a key role for the Buffanblu down the stretch.

“He’s just an athlete and a competitor and I really like that about our multi-sport guys,” Sue said. “They are just out here playing and tend to have a really strong competing mind-set. Koa is an athlete and I really like that about Koa.”