One swing of the bat was the defining moment in Saturday’s showdown of the top two ILH baseball teams.

Everything after Hunter Peneueta’s third-inning, three-run homer belonged to No. 4 Saint Louis, which kept No. 3 Punahou from clinching the regular-season crown with a 10-6 victory at Central Oahu Regional Park.

But before that homer, it was all Buffanblu, who couldn’t find a way back in the latter stages.

Punahou (12-2), however, remained a half-game ahead of the Crusaders (12-3) and can wrap up the outright regular-season title and a Division I state-tournament berth by beating Kamehameha on Monday at Goeas Field. A loss there would put the Buffanblu in a playoff against Saint Louis before the league’s postseason tournament.

Trailing 4-0 and looking defeated in their final regular-season game, the Crusaders finally came around in the third after stranding three baserunners in the second. With two outs, Makana Ontai’s high pop between shortstop and center field fell for an RBI double. JT Navyac followed with an RBI single, and two batters later, Peneueta drilled that three-run homer over the left-field fence to put Saint Louis ahead 5-4. The Crusaders never trailed again.

“Down by four, we were trying to cut it in half at that point,” Saint Louis coach George Gusman said. “All of a sudden, we take the lead, and I would have been perfectly happy if we had cut it in half, nibble away. Hunter’s big hit turned the whole thing around.”

Austin Texeira’s RBI single in the fourth upped the count to 6-4.

In the top of the fifth, Aaron Tom’s two-run blast to left-center got Punahou closer at 6-5, but in the bottom half, two errors, Cole Kashimoto’s two-run single and Caleb Lomavita’s sacrifice fly pushed four Saint Louis runs home for a 10-5 bulge.

“Honestly, we played a good game,” said the Buffanblu’s Makana Murashige, who drove in three of his team’s runs. “It wasn’t our best day, but that’s just how it goes. That’s baseball. We’ll come out on Monday (against Kamehameha) and give it our all and hope for the best. You gotta give it to the Crusaders today. They played a helluva game.”

Tom’s triple in the seventh drove in the Buffanblu’s final run. All told, Tom went 3-for-4 with a homer, a triple, two runs scored and three RBIs.

Punahou took a 3-0, first-inning lead on Tom’s RBI single and Murashige’s two-run triple. Murashige’s second triple of the game in the third drove in a run to make it 4-0.

That was before Saint Louis came to life and cleared the bench to congratulate Peneueta after his monster shot.

“We went down and then had to stay within ourselves,” Peneueta said. “We wanted one run at a time and then I hit that ball. That was all practice and working hard. The coaches told me to visualize and stay calm and do things just how I hit in the cage and wait for the pitch. This was a big win. We knew we had to get this. It’s not in our hands now. We’ll wait and see what happens (Monday).”

Winning pitcher Richie Vidal III scattered five hits in his five innings and got two innings of relief help from Makaio Bruchal. Punahou starter Matt McConnell struck out four in 31⁄3 innings in the loss.