AZUSA, Calif.--Hawai`i Hilo's Phillip Steering hit two home runs and Drew Ichikawa had successful debut in his first collegiate start on the mound, but that wasn't nearly enough against No. 15 nationally ranked Azusa Pacific as the Cougars swept both games of a doubleheader, 11-2 and 13-2 on Thursday afternoon.

APU improved to 21-3 on the season and to 8-2 in the Pacific West Conference. The Vulcans are now 3-11 overall and 3-9 in league play. It was the sixth consecutive win for the Cougars, who are in second place in the PWC behind leader Point Loma.

Even thought the scores were similar, the two games were very different.

In the opener, the Cougars took a lead early, using a Pablo O'Connor home run and a four-hit second inning to post a 4-0 lead after just two innings of play. In general, that is plenty of runs for APU's Michael Fairchild, who improved to 5-0 today by giving up just two runs in eight innings of work.

Still, Fairchild had to survive a Steering solo home run and a Jacob Grijalva RBI-single in the fourth inning, but they did by answering with a run each in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, and then added four more in the eighth.

Steering and Grijalva both had two hits in the game for the Vulcans but the Cougars had 14 of the same against two UHH pitchers.

In the second game, Steering got the Vulcans on the board first by driving in a run with a single in the third inning, and that 1-0 lead held until the bottom of the fifth. That's because Ichikawa kept the high-scoring Cougars mostly off the scoreboard with five solid innings of work. The junior, making his first start of the year, allowed just one hit and one run, but was on an innings limit having pitched no more than two innings all season.

The score was still 1-1 until the Cougars became unleashed in the seventh. They put up nine runs in that inning, squashing any hopes of a UH Hilo upset. They had seven hits in the inning, including a three-run home run by Adrian Tovalin.

Steering had two hits again in the game, giving him four for the day including the two homers. Dylan Sugimoto had a pair of hits in game two as well. 

The two teams will continue the four-game series on Friday at 2 pm.