Sacramento State won their opening series of Western Athletic Conference play on Sunday by defeating the University of Hawaii 9-4.

With the win Sac State’s record now stands at 14-18-1 overall and 3-1 in WAC. Hawaii returns home with a record of 18-18 overall and 2-6 in WAC play.

Sac State scored all nine of their runs between the second and fifth innings, with the big inning coming in the bottom of the second with the Hornets scoring five runs.

Sac State senior pitcher Jose Ramirez started the game for the Hornets, earning his first win of the season. His record is now 1-2. Ramirez threw six solid innings giving up three runs on seven hits while walking and striking out two batters.

The Rainbow Warriors started Zach Gallagher for the final game of the series. Gallagher was run from the game early by the big bats of Sac State. Gallagher lasted only one third an inning giving up four hits and five runs with only one of those runs being earned. The Hawaii pitcher’s record drops to 3-3 on the season.

Ramirez said the seven runs early in the game by his teammates allowed him to relax on the mound and throw the pitches that he wanted.

“It helped a lot,” Ramirez said. “It just made me try and throw more strikes instead of making them just hit the ball. I was making them try to earn their runs. If it is a close game you don’t want to throw too good of pitches. But since we were up by seven runs I was able to make them hit groundballs for outs.”

At the plate Justin Mezzaneras was 2-3 with two singles, two runs and a walk. Mezzaneras said he was trying to stay fixed on how the pitchers were coming at him.

“I was just trying to stick with an approach,” Mezzaneras said. “The first two Hawaii were throwing fastballs away so I was just trying to stay middle and swing through the ball and hit it the other way. The last Hawaii pitcher was throwing into me and I just battled and got the walk.”

On his teams success in the game, head coach John Smith felt his team did a good job carrying out their game plan for the day.

“I thought we did a really good job of execution of situational hitting,” Smith said. “We had situations where we had chances to drive in runs. We made good contact, found holes and found the outfield grass when we needed to. Having that one five run inning, I think took a lot of the wind out of their sails. It is now an up hill battle for them to fight and they start to think they now need to hit two or three balls out the park. When we got the five run inning it allowed us to get the outs we need to win.”

Sac State will host the University of New Mexico next Friday to begin another four game series in WAC play. First pitch is scheduled for 2 p.m. at Hornet Field.

Matt Harrington can be reached at [email protected]