Heading into its final regular season series of the 2025 season, the sentiment is simple for the University of Hawai‘i baseball team: Win or stay home.
The Rainbow Warriors will host UC San Diego for a three-game series at Les Murakami Stadium on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, with Saturday reserved for graduation on the UH-Mānoa campus.
At 31-18 overall and 14-13 in Big West play, Hawai‘i is in a three-way tie for fourth place with UC Santa Barbara and UC San Diego in the conference standings. Only five teams qualify for the inaugural Big West tournament from May 21-25 at Cal State Fullerton.
Although the 'Bows won their series over UC Santa Barbara, UH also lost a series to Long Beach State, which will determine the tiebreaker. Long Beach already completed conference play at 15-15.
Two wins against UC San Diego would give the Rainbow Warriors a series win over the Tritons and would also put UH above UCSD in the standings. Anything less than two wins, and a season for UH that started with so much hope will come to an early end.
Hawai‘i is hosting a set of games with direct postseason implications for the first time since the 2009 WAC Tournament. Multiple seasons have ended with UH nearing the top of the conference standings, but after joining the Big West in 2013, there has not been a tournament to play for.
Despite all that is at stake, UH baseball coach Rich Hill is not allowing himself or his team to get caught up in the circumstances.
"It's a best of three," Hill said. "It feels like postseason baseball where there's heavy consequence. It's our job to not have any attachment to it and just be obsessed with excellence, which is being obsessed with the process and doing everything you can to stack pitches and innings and game one, that's it."
Gamesmanship has been displayed by both programs heading into the series. UCSD canceled its Tuesday game against San Diego in order to be fully prepared for Thursday, while the Rainbow Warriors did not announce a single starting pitcher for the first time all year. No. 1 starter Itsuki Takemoto recently saw his ERA rise to 5.10.
Although making the conference tournament is their priority, the 'Bows can avoid the 4-5 play-in game if they sweep UCSD and UC Irvine sweeps Cal State Fullerton. The Rainbow Warriors have been trained to not focus on things they can't control, which includes scoreboard watching during the game.
"We have our focus, and we know what's at stake," senior outfielder Jared Quandt said. "It's easy to try to take things one pitch at a time when you're telling yourself that's what needs to happen, and we do a lot of training like that, where we try to leave the result and just focus on the process. And I think we've done a pretty good job of that. ... I think we're gonna come out here this weekend, do the same thing and just try to win every pitch. You win more pitches than the other team, you're gonna win the game. So, that's where we're at."
Regardless of what happens during the series, the Rainbow Warriors will honor their 13 seniors following Sunday's game.
"This is what we were talking about in the fall. We wanted a game, a series, to matter, whether it was regional or this. We wanted it to be here. I'm just excited," Ben Zeigler-Namoa said. "I think fans are excited. Family is excited, and all these guys are just excited."
Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
