Cal Poly Clinches Hawaii Series on Sunday With 5-2 Victory

Sunday, April 17

Manoa, HI

4:5 pm

21-13, 4-2

Hawai'i

17-17, 6-3

Cal Poly

Hawaii

Cal Poly Clinches Hawaii Series on Sunday With 5-2 Victory

4/17/2016 12:00:00 AM | Baseball

Box Score

HONOLULU, Hawaii – Jarred Zill earned his third win and five different Mustangs drove in runs as Cal Poly defeated Hawaii 5-2 in the rubber game of their Big West Conference baseball series Sunday afternoon in Les Murakami Stadium.

With the series-clinching victory, Cal Poly improved to 4-2 in Big West games and 21-13 for the season. Hawaii, which had won 11 of 14 after a 6-12 start, suffered its second straight loss and fell to 17-17 for the year and 6-3 in the Big West.

Cal Poly has dropped the opener of both of its Big West series and came back to win the series each time. The Mustangs have won six of nine series, is 17-1 when leading after six innings and is eight games above the .500 mark for the sixth time this season.

Cal Poly broke a scoreless tie in the third inning without benefit of a hit. Brett Binning drew a one-out wallk, moved to second base on a sacrifice bunt, took third on a wild pitch and scored on Kyle Marinconz's grounder to shortstop.

Hawaii scored twice in the fifth inning to take a 2-1 lead but Cal Poly responded quickly with two runs of its own in the sixth on back-to-back RBI doubles by Brett Barbier and John Schuknecht.

Cal Poly added another run in the seventh on Alex McKenna's run-scoring double and tallied another insurance run in the eighth as Barbier reached third base on a dropped fly ball in center field and came home on a sacrifice fly by Michael Sanderson.

Hawaii had runners on first and second with nobody out in the eighth but two grounders and a strikeout ended the threat. In the ninth, Kekai Rios led off with a single but was stranded at first base.

Josh George had two of Cal Poly's seven hits. Hawaii's seven hits included doubles by Matt LoCoco and Alex Fitchett and two singles by Rios.

Both Barbier and Sanderson extended their streaks of reaching base safely to 34 games.

Zill (3-1) (pictured above) tossed 6 2/3 innings and allowed two runs and five hits with one walk and four strikeouts. Spencer Howard secured two outs, Justin Bruihl one and Justin Calomeni earned his fifth save by striking out four of the five batters he faced.

Cal Poly will play four games at home next week, hosting Fresno State for a single game Tuesday night and UC Santa Barbara for a three-game Big West Conference series Friday through Sunday inside Baggett Stadium.