No. 2 Rice sweeps Rainbows, 11-1

By Stacy Kaneshiro
Advertiser Staff Writer

One play yesterday said it all for the University of Hawai'i's baseball weekend against nationally ranked Rice.

Rice starting pitcher Josh Baker gave up a run on six hits and in seven innings against Hawai'i. He struck out four and walked two to improve his record to 4-0. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

Rice (6-0 WAC, 19-1 overall) extended its winning streak to 16 in beating Hawai'i (1-5, 13-8) for the ninth consecutive time dating to last season's six-game sweep.

The Owls, ranked No. 2 by Baseball America, committed their first error in 51á innings yesterday, only their fifth of the season. But it wasn't as costly as the mental error the Rainbows committed on the ensuing play.

With the score 3-0, Andrew Sansaver singled to start the third inning. Then, Brent Cook grounded to third baseman Austin Davis, who let the ball through with Sansaver taking third. Rocky Russo hit a fly to center for an apparent sacrifice fly. But Sansaver tagged too early, retreated to third to tag again, then decided to stay. Josh Green followed by grounding into an inning-ending double play, stranding Sansaver at third.

"That was frustrating," UH coach Mike Trapasso said. "That summed up the whole weekend for us, just making mental mistakes that hurt."

Said Sansaver: "I messed up. I let the whole team down."

"The truth is we're a good club," Trapasso said. "We're still 13-8 and our guys had to be reminded of that. We're still 13-8 for a reason. We won those 13 games because we played well through most of those. We didn't play well (in this series) and most of that is because of Rice. But the truth is we didn't play well yesterday and today. When you don't play well, you're going to get pounded by a team like that. We didn't make the pitches, we didn't make the plays, we didn't do anything offensively. When that happens, you're going to get beat, I don't care who you're playing if you play like we did."

Hawai'i will have to get over its disappointment quickly because it hosts a two-game series starting tomorrow against Coastal Carolina. It is the first time the two schools will be playing each other.

The Chanticleers (18-4), who took two 2-of-3 from Pepperdine over the weekend, are favored to repeat as Big South champions. Trapasso is familiar with Coastal Carolina from when he was an assistant at Georgia Tech.

"They usually pitch very well and are very scrappy," Trapasso said. "If we're feeling sorry for ourselves and just come out and go through the motions and give up half of the game like we've done on some of our (other) mid-week games, we'll get beat. It will be good for us to play someone like Coastal because they'll push us to the limit. We have to play our best game to beat 'em."

For the second consecutive day, UH's starting pitcher could not get past the fifth inning. Ricky Bauer (1-1) was charged with seven runs (two unearned) on 10 hits in four-plus innings. He allowed a single and back-to-back RBI doubles by Vincent Sinisi and Davis before being lifted for Nick Ponomarenko, the first of four relievers UH used.

Davis atoned for his error by batting 4 for 4 with two doubles and a walk. Each of his hits drove in a run. He was 1 for 5 on Saturday after going 2 for 4 Friday.

"I felt I could've done a little better job yesterday, so getting four hits today was pretty big for me," he said.

As for the rare Rice error, Davis said he should have made the play.

"The guy hit it right on the nose, but still, I've got to make that play for my pitcher," he said. "I was more upset about that than the game situation. We've been preaching all year about keeping our fielding percentage up. I was kind of upset about letting the team down that way, but it was a big win for us."

As with the previous nights, eight of Rice's nine starters had at least one hit. Jeff Jorgensen and Sinisi had three hits each and Justin Ruchti had a solo home run in the eighth inning.

The Owls' 15-hit attack supported starting pitcher Josh Baker (4-0), who gave up a run on six hits and two walks in seven innings. Colin Matheny and David Aardsma each pitched a scoreless inning of relief.

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