The Hawaii baseball team relied on ensemble pitching and opportunistic offense to defeat Ole Miss 13-4 and earn a split of the season-opening, four-game series at Les Murakami Stadium.

After dropping the first two games of the series to the 2022 College World Series champions, the Rainbow Warriors won the next two by a combined 22-5. Freshmen pitchers Isaiah Magdaleno and Itsuki Takemoto combined on a three-hitter in Saturday’s second game of a doubleheader. This afternoon, eight UH pitchers allowed five hits.

Zacary Tenn, who missed last season after recovering from “Tommy John” injury to his right (pitching) elbow, entered with one out and the bases loaded in the first inning. After yielding a sacrifice fly, he worked out of that jam and pitched a scoreless second inning to earn the victory.

“I wanted to go out there and minimize the damage,” Tenn said. “I was out there in the first and let my defense work.”

UH head coach Rich Hill’s initial strategy was to use nine pitchers for an inning apiece. “We script it out like that, but we also have emergency guys who will get hot if somebody gets hurt or has trouble throwing strikes or is getting hit. We plug those guys in there. Zac was the first guy up. We had him warm. And, man, that was a huge momentum change.”

Catcher Dallas Duarte drove in three runs and Austin Machado and Matthew Miura each had two RBIs. The ’Bows also took advantage of six Ole Miss errors that led to six unearned runs.