CORVALLIS, Ore. — Hawai'i simply ran out of pitching in its quest for a berth in the College World Series.

The Rainbows hit their off-ramp on the road to Omaha after falling to top-seeded and fifth-ranked Oregon State, 12-3, last night in the NCAA Corvallis Regional championship in front of 2,783 at Goss Stadium.

Oregon State (42-14) advances to the best-of-three Super Regionals against Stanford — winner of the Austin, Texas, Regional — in a Pac-10 matchup at a site to be determined. The Super Regionals are baseball's equivalent of basketball's Sweet 16. The eight winners advance to the CWS in Omaha, Neb.

Yesterday's loss brought an end to the Hawai'i's most successful season since 1993, when it made its last regional appearance. At 45-17, it was UH's winningest season since 1992, when it finished 49-14.

"I'm very happy for our players, for our coaches, our fans back in Hawai'i," UH coach Mike Trapasso said. "It was an impact year for us to get our program going back into postseason in a long time.

"Now, we will say goodbye to our seniors, which will be very difficult to do."

Especially since most of the seven had an impact on the reviving program.

"We reached one of our goals, making the postseason," senior catcher Esteban Lopez said.

Lopez was an ironman during the Rainbows' stretch run, starting the last 20 games.

"It's my job to play every day," Lopez said. "I just had to suck it up. I felt good enough to play, so I played."

It was the end for outfielder Matt Inouye, the only four-year letterwinner on the team.

"In my four years here, we finally got to a regional," he said.

That UH made it to the title game, after ousting Wright State Saturday and No. 22 Kansas earlier yesterday, was a testament to the players. The Rainbows opened the regional with news that All-America pitcher Steven Wright would be out because of mononucleosis. Without their ace, and playing an extra game after dropping into the losers' bracket, the Rainbows pitching staff was basically running on fumes.

"Obviously, we were stretched with our pitching situation," Trapasso said. "Fatigue has never been a factor with our guys because the character of this club is such that they're going to fight, scratch, claw all the way through."

Ian Harrington's complete game win against Wright State on Saturday and closer Darrell Fisherbaugh's longest outing of the season in beating Kansas, 9-5, earlier yesterday were still not enough to help UH's pitching against the host Beavers.

Freshman right-hander Matt Daly (6-2), making only his second start of the season — his first was March 12 in an 11-1 win against Western Illinois — battled control problems in the first inning, when he walked the first two batters, had a wild pitch and gave up a sacrifice fly to give OSU a 1-0 lead.

Daly then gave up four successive singles in the third — the last one by Tyler Graham that drove in two runs — and an RBI groundout to make it 4-0. Daly, who had pitched two innings of relief on Friday, lasted only 2 2/3 innings, allowing four runs, five hits and four walks.

Tyler Davis, who pitched 1 2/3 innings of relief on Friday, wasn't as effective as usual, allowing four runs, three hits and a walk in 3 2/3 innings.

Down 8-3 entering the top of the eighth, seldom-used Dean Turner was called upon. He allowed four unearned runs in 1 1/3 innings. They were unearned because of a throwing error by freshman reserve shortstop Nathan Young, who started the last three games after Eli Christensen suffered an elbow injury.

The Beavers had fresh arms. Starter Mike Stutes (7-2) gave up three runs, eight hits and two walks with four strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings. Joe Paterson pitched one scoreless inning of relief and Eddie Kunz added 2 1/3 innings of one-hit ball.

Bill Rowe had six RBIs, batting 2 for 4, and Graham was 3 for 4 with three RBIs to highlight the Beavers' offense.

"They're a balanced club," Trapasso said. "They're playing with a lot of confidence right now."

OSU coach Pat Casey could appreciate UH's effort.

"It's always tough coming out of the losers' bracket," Casey said. "You have to come back the same day. A lot of things fell in place for us. We didn't have to expend a lot of our pitching coming into today. Our guys really played well. When we needed some big hits, we got 'em."

Even before the game, OSU supporters were already talking of hosting a Super Regional with Texas not winning its regional. Texas was the national seed to host a Super Regional against the winner of the Corvallis Regional. But UH made the Beavers supporters squeeze a little midway through the game, pulling to 4-2 in the bottom of the fourth. With two outs, Inouye doubled and scored on Jon Hee's single. After taking third on Kris Sanchez's single, Hee scored on Lopez's RBI single.

After yielding a run in the fifth, the Rainbows closed to 5-3 in the sixth on back-to-back doubles by Sanchez and Lopez. But the Beavers added three runs in the seventh and four in the eighth to seal their Super Regional berth.

Reach Stacy Kaneshiro at skaneshiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.