Showing a flair for the dramatic and a propensity to be relentless on opposing pitchers, the University of Hawai‘i baseball team swept its season-opening series over Marshall at Les Murakami Stadium, winning four straight games from Friday to Sunday.
Hopes were high for the Rainbow Warriors heading into the 2025 season, who ended their 2024 campaign winning 16 of their last 17.
Friday night's season opener, however, started inauspiciously for Hawai‘i, as Marshall jumped out to a 5-0 lead through three innings. UH cut the deficit to 5-3 in the fifth inning, but Marshall answered with a two-run home run from Ethan Murdoch. The Rainbow Warriors chipped away with three runs in the sixth inning but trailed 8-6 heading into the bottom of the ninth.
In his first at-bat playing for his hometown team, Mid-Pacific alumnus and Cal State Fullerton transfer Draven Nushida hit a walk-off double in the bottom of the ninth, giving fourth-year head coach Rich Hill his first opening night win in a UH uniform.
The Rainbow Warriors then took the first game of Saturday's doubleheader 6-2, taming the Marshall offense with a pair of strong pitching performances from Itsuki Takemoto and Liam O'Brien. Takemoto pitched the first five innings, earning the victory after scattering four hits and three walks with three strikeouts, throwing 94 pitches. O'Brien, a transfer from Gonzaga who can reach as high as 98 miles per hour on the radar gun, shut down the Thundering Herd in getting the final six outs.
Hawai‘i fell behind again in Saturday's nightcap, trailing 6-3 at the seventh-inning stretch. After scoring twice in the bottom of the seventh and once in the bottom of the eighth, the 'Bows got their second walk-off win in as many nights on Shunsuke Sakaino's single.
Friday and Saturday's momentum carried over into Sunday, where the Rainbow Warriors completed the series sweep with a 10-2 rout in front of a turnstile crowd of 1,901.
The Rainbow Warriors exit the week 4-0, their best four-game start since 2018. Meanwhile, their home winning streak reached 15.
"The result is great. It's a good Marshall team," Hill said following Sunday's game. "We got a lot of guys that have not had tons of Division I experience in there. Once again, the fans were amazing, a couple walk-off wins. When we go back to the drawing board, we'll see some things that we need to improve on, and that's really the focus. It's about getting better every day and every weekend up through conference play."
One pitch was all Nushida saw on Friday after coming off the bench. After earning the start at third base in the final two games of the series, he exited the weekend with a batting average of .444, going 2-for-4 with three RBI in the series finale.
"It was a super fun weekend," Nushida said. "Our pitchers did a really good job. Our hitters were executing a lot. It's been really fun just playing out here this weekend. Just seeing my family out there in the stands, them rooting for me, I mean, I love it."
Like Nushida, Sakaino continued to produce at the plate after delivering a walk-off hit, going 2-for-3 with two RBI on Sunday. He exited the series with a team-high batting average of .583, going a molten 7-for-12.
"I thought we screwed up when I was at (San Diego) not recruiting him harder," Hill said of Sakaino, a fellow native of Southern California. "And I thought we screwed up not recruiting Draven, just always kind of in the back of my mind. So the bottom line is, those guys are back and playing vital roles this weekend and will continue to improve."
For veterans on the team, the 2025 team's opening weekend felt like a continuation of 2024, where the 'Bows were one of the hottest teams in the country down the stretch.
"We've just been building every year," redshirt senior Jared Quandt says, "and I think a lot of the teams we've had, we've had the ability to accomplish and we've just fell a little bit short. I think we got another chance with this group, and this is a great group of guys, and I'm excited to see what we can do."
The Rainbow Warriors return to the field on Thursday for another four-game set against Wichita State, another chance to prove to themselves if they're on track for the season they think can be had.
"Potential is a scary word, but they do have amazing potential," Hill said. "The ingredients are all there for an extremely successful season, for a Big West championship season. Do we have the recipe? That will be revealed. We need to go back and really work on some things in all facets of the game to be that caliber.
"We're not talking about competing. We're talking about being at the championship level, and it's very hard to win a (conference) championship on the West Coast, so we need to get better."
Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
