Sea Warriors advance with 3-1 victory over Wayne State

Sea Warriors advance behind Musquiz's 3-1 victory over Wayne (MI) State

St. Joseph, Mo. – Behind the dominating pitching of Sherise Musquiz, Hawai‘i Pacific captured its opening-round game at the NCAA Division II Softball College World Series by defeating Wayne (MI) State University 3-1.

HPU now advances to the winners bracket to face Lone Star Conference representative Angelo State at 1:30 p.m. on Friday. The Rams knocked off Metro State of Denver, Colo., 10-3.

The game can be heard live on Red Zone Media and also may be viewed on NCAA TV.

Sherise Musquiz (31-3), who was named an NFCA First-Team All-American and a Daktronics First Team All-American in the last 24 hours, dominated the Midwest Region champions.

She allowed no earned runs on three hits in seven innings of work. Casey Hanes (42-7) was tagged with the loss for Wayne State (Detroit, Mich.) after surrendering three runs on just five base hits.

“I thought we prepared well for Wayne State,” HPU Head Coach Bryan Nakasone explained. “We knew they had a good pitcher with 355 strike outs and we anticipated she would have some sort of movement on her ball, especially a rise ball. She came with a change up and it caught us off balance for the first few innings. We made our adjustments after that and sat on fastballs and fortunately we got people on base and had timely hitting.”

The Sea Warriors jumped on the board in the third inning, forcing home two runs on a twin-RBI base hit by Casey Sugihara.

The Sea Warriors added their third run one inning later when Musquiz helped her own cause with an RBI-single following Maile Kim’s leadoff double.

Wayne State scored one run in the final inning, but the damage by HPU was irrevocable. The Sea Warriors improved to 47-8 overall, while the Warriors fell to 53-12.

Stephanie LeClair led Wayne State with one hit and one run.

“I think it was a good first win for us,” Sugihara said. “We traveled far and worked really hard to get here; so, just knowing we could compete with the rest of the teams here proved a lot.”