NC State baseball taking advantage of ‘education’ on trip to Hawaii
NC State freshman pitcher Ryan Marohn has not been farther west than San Diego, Calif., but this weekend, he is going to pitch in a brand-new setting: Les Murakami Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The Wolfpack made its first trip to Manoa in seven years to play the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors for a three-game weekend series that begins Friday night. For NC State coach Elliott Avent, the trip is worth it for the level of competition, but also as an early-season bonding experience.
“I’m excited for the players,” Avent said over the weekend. “When we went in ‘17, you hear years later about how much fun they had, how they became a team. They still talk about it.”
While the trip will allow the roster, made up of 20 returning players and 19 newcomers, to continue to grow closer to one another, Avent made it known there is more than just a trio of baseball games on the trip. Instead, he noted that it will be a learning experience for his roster.
The team left for Hawaii on Tuesday before it had its first practice at the stadium on Wednesday. After the Wolfpack got acclimated to the field, it visited Pearl Harbor to better understand what happened at that site 82 years ago.
Avent, the Pack’s 28th-year coach, thought it was important for the team to see it in person. That is just one piece of the “education” that the Wolfpack will receive during its trip to Hawaii, while the players will also come together to work through other scenarios that may pop up on the trip.
“Part of the process of going to college is an education, and I’m not just talking about math and english,” Avent said. “I’m talking about the education of doing things and going to Hawaii, understanding how to navigate some things. … What players learn here in college helps them as they get older and they become the guys and young women that are going to run this country.”
On the baseball side of things, NC State will face off with a talented Hawaii squad, which split its opening four-game series with Ole Miss this past weekend. The Rainbow Warriors dropped the first two games to the Rebels, but outscored Ole Miss 22-5 in the latter pair of contests to level the weekend.
Hawaii’s batting order was paced by freshman infielder Elijah Ickes with a .556 batting average after he went 5-for-9 with six runs scored five hits and a .714 on-base percentage against Ole Miss.
While the first-year player impressed, the Rainbow Warriors found success in getting free bases against the Rebels. Hawaii had 27 walks and seven hit batters in the four game schedule, which ranks first in the Big West Conference and in the top 40 nationally.
Pitching-wise, Hawaii held Ole Miss to a .183 batting average and logged a 3.25 ERA on the mound.
This weekend’s series will pit two of the nine active coaches with more than 1,000 career wins against one another. Hawaii coach Rich Hill has 1,138 career victories in 37 seasons as a collegiate coach, while Avent has 1,224 career wins in his 35 years at the helm of college programs.
“We’re going down there, it’s a great Hawaii team,” Avent said. “They’ve got a great ball club, an older ball club. Rich, their coach, is a friend of mine — we coached on Team USA together. … This is going to be a great challenge.”
Broadcast Details
TV stream: ESPN+ (Friday only)
TV talent: Kanoa Leahey (play-by-play) and Pal Eldredge (analyst)
NCSU radio broadcast (Friday only): WKNC 88.1
NCSU radio talent: Andrew Sanders (play-by-play)
First pitch times: Friday 11:35 p.m. ET, Saturday 11:35 p.m. ET, Sunday 6:05 p.m. ET
Projected starting rotation
Friday: RHP Sam Highfill (NCSU) vs. LHP Harrison Bodendorf (UH)
Saturday: LHP Dom Fritton (NCSU) vs. LHP Randy Abshier (UH)
Sunday: LHP Ryan Marohn (NCSU) vs. TBD (UH)
