Poteet Tosses Five Scoreless As UCLA Downs Hawaii 5-1

A weekend of meager offense carried over to midweek action as UCLA struggled to string together hits against Hawaii, but despite their hitting woes, they did manage to put together some runs. Aided four walks and two Warriors errors, the Bruins did enough offensive to pick up a 5-1 win over Hawaii and push their record to 20-9 on the season.

While the offense cobbled together enough runs, the UCLA pitching staff was superb. Cody Poteet turned in his best start of his young career, tossing five scoreless innings to pick up the win. The freshman allowed just two hits, struck out two and walked two before turning the ball to the bullpen, which surrendered just one run on three hits in the final four innings.

It took until the third inning before UCLA picked up their first hit of the game, but they they made that first base hit count. Tyler Scott walked with one out in the third, bringing up Brent Allen, who laced one into the right center gap for a RBI triple. A walk and hit by pitch later, the Bruins had the bases loaded and when an error allowed Kevin Kramer to reach, it also allowed a run to score. Pat Valaika followed with sacrifice fly and UCLA had a 3-0 lead.

After that, the Bruin offense went quiet again, which wasn't a problem because the pitching was phenomenal. Poteet worked his five innings and while Jake Ehret allowed a run in the sixth, James Kaprielian and Max Schuh combined for a scoreless seventh.

UCLA's offense finally showed signs of life in the seventh thanks to a Shane Zeile double, becoming the first Bruin to reach base since the third inning, but he ran into an out and sent Zack Weiss to the mound for the eighth. Weiss worked a 1-2-3 eighth to give the Bruins offense another look and this time it put the scoreboard to work.

Valaika got a two-out rally started with a walk and after stealing second, Pat Gallagher laced a double down the right field line to score Valaika easily. Zeile then singled to left to score Gallagher and the Bruins were sitting pretty with a 5-1 lead.

Rubber-armed David Berg went to the mound in the ninth inning and made quick work of the Warriors. The sophomore retired Hawaii on just six pitchers in the ninth, sealing a pitching-fueled Bruin victory.