UC Santa Barbara’s Ben Brecht had the “It” factor on Friday night.

The Stephen King enthusiast spaced four hits over six innings to lead the sixth-ranked Gauchos to an 8-2 baseball victory over Hawaii at Les Murakami Stadium.

A crowd of 1,982 saw the Gauchos win their 11th in a row and continue their dominance of the Big West. They are 42-7 overall and atop the league at 16-3. The Rainbow Warriors fell to 20-25 and 8-11.

“They were better than us,” UH coach Mike Trapasso said. “We were outplayed in every phase.”

Brecht exited just before the start of the seventh inning with an apparent injury. His departure was preceded by a visit to the mound by UCSB coach Andrew Checketts and a trainer. Before that, Brecht was an inning-turning mystery the ’Bows could not solve.

Brecht did not issue a walk — he had only one three-ball count. He threw strikes on 71.3 percent of his pitches, including first-pitch strikes to 16 of 23 batters. He struck out seven, including Dallas Duarte, who had fanned 11 times in 139 previous at-bats.

“Brecht pitches really well up in the zone,” Trapasso said. “He’s a high-spin-rate guy. We coudn’t hit the ball up in the zone, and we couldn’t lay off it. It was a bad recipe.”

The Gauchos scored three runs in the fourth to break a 1-all tie.

Marcos Castanon hit a high-bouncing grounder that found its way to left field with one out. Kyle Johnson, the only left-swinging hitter in the Gauchos’ starting lineup, pulled a drive off the wall in right field for a double. McClain O’Connor then drew the first of his two walks to load the bases. In the second inning, the Gauchos failed to score after filling the bases with no outs. This time, Tevin Mitchell, who entered batting .571 with the bases full, hit a sacrifice fly to score Castanon.

Eric Yang followed with a double that ricocheted off the wall in left field to bring home Johnson and O’Connor.

Cade Smith made his sixth start — and 15th appearance — for the ’Bows. His series-opening availability was in question earlier in the week. Smith was one of 10 ’Bows who suffered from flu-like symptoms following their road trip two weeks ago.

But Smith started and pitched well in the first inning, retiring three of the four batters, and craftily the next two innings. In the second, Smith escaped a bases-loaded jam by striking out Castanon and then inducing Johnson to ground into a double play. In the third, Thomas Rowan powered an opposite-field single off the base of the wall in right field. Rowan stayed put at first, but O’Connor sprinted home from first to tie it at 1.

Smith departed after four innings and 97 pitches. He walked four and relinquished six hits and four runs.

The Gauchos broke it open with a four-run ninth. Andrew Martinez’s three-run blast over the 385-foot marker in center field punctuated the final frame. It was Martinez’s eighth homer of the season. The Gauchos have hit 64 homers this season. They are 35-1 in games in which they have homered.

The ’Bows were without senior Maaki Yamazaki (throwing shoulder) at shortstop for the fourth consecutive game.

After experiencing pain in his throwing shoulder, Yamazaki played second for a game and was the designated hitter for two games. He was not in the lineup on Friday.