Ian Harrington continued Hawai'i's pitching mastery against San Jose State yesterday with five-hit ball over seven innings in a 3-1 win to complete the Western Athletic Conference series sweep at Municipal Stadium in San Jose, Calif.

The No. 29 Rainbows (40-13 overall, 17-6 WAC) reached the 40-win mark for the first time since 1992 (49-14). They accomplished the feat despite three games canceled because of inclement weather, including a WAC game at Nevada that ultimately might have cost them at least a share of the regular season title. Instead, Fresno State (18-6) won it by a half-game with a 7-4 win yesterday against Sacramento State for a series sweep.

"It feels good, sure, to do it in the regular season with only 53 games," UH coach Mike Trapasso said. "It's kind of special. It kind of helps, obviously. Now we just have to go back to work on Thursday and play a solid LaTech team and face one of the tougher pitchers in our league in (Luke) Burnett."

The start of yesterday's game was delayed about 80 minutes because of rain.

It was UH's fourth WAC series sweep and eighth overall this season.

Harrington (7-3) picked up where Steven Wright and Justin Costi left off. The only blemish on Harrington was that he allowed the only earned run of the series in which UH outscored SJSU, 20-2. The unearned run came in Wright's 11-1 win Friday.

Harrington, a junior left-hander, walked one and struck out seven. Tyler Davis added two perfect innings — including three strikeouts — for his third save.

Harrington sailed along until the sixth, when back-to-back singles and his only walk of the game loaded the bases with no outs. Harrington got Ryan Angel on a grounder to third baseman Justin Frash that scored a run. Greg Fyfe popped out to second and Harrington struck out Nick Epidendio, stranding the tying runners in scoring position.

"If the ground ball to Frash doesn't take a bad hop, it's double play with no runs scoring," Trapasso said. "The big play of that inning was the pop up. That was huge, it didn't allow a run to score."

Harrington returned to the mound in the seventh, retiring the side in order on eight pitches before giving way to Davis.

The Rainbows scratched for enough runs to win, but had opportunities to give Harrington a thicker cushion.

Hawai'i scored in the first when Justin Frash doubled with two outs and scored on Luis Avila's single off SJSU starter Josh Amberson (6-4).

But UH had a chance for a big inning in the third when Jon Hee, Robbie Wilder and Derek DuPree got consecutive singles to load the bases. But after Frash walked to force in a run to make it 2-0, Amberson struck out Avila, got Matt Inouye on a shallow fly to center and retired Esteban Lopez on a grounder. Amberson left after the inning having allowed two runs, five hits and a walk with three strikeouts.

The Rainbows looked like they would have their way against Greg Shannon, who walked Eli Christensen and Jorge Franco to start the fourth before balking them into scoring position. He then walked Hee to load the bases. Shannon fell behind 2-0 on Wilder and was replaced by Matt Winck.

Winck got Wilder to hit a grounder to second that led to a force out at the plate. DuPree grounded out to second to score Franco and increase UH's lead to 3-0. But Frash grounded out to second to end the inning. Winck retired all 15 batters he faced, striking out one.

"We had opportunities to score more," Trapasso said. "We just didn't. Winck came in and was absolutely awesome. He made good pitches and was throwing a real good slider today. He had us befuddled. I give him credit. We had just enough offense to make it work."

The Rainbows next mission is the WAC tournament at Fresno State. Only the tournament champion is awarded an automatic NCAA regional berth. But UH and FSU (39-16 overall) are hopeful of an at-large berth should they not win the double elimination tournament.

Second-seeded UH will open with fifth-seeded Louisiana Tech at 8 a.m. Thursday. Third seed San Jose State plays fourth seed Nevada at noon and top seed Fresno State plays sixth seed Sacramento State at 4 p.m. All times are Hawai'i.

Hawai'i will take today off and workout tomorrow morning in San Jose before driving to Fresno in the afternoon.

The Rainbows will workout at Beiden Field on Wednesday. That evening, the WAC will announce its all-WAC teams and player awards at a banquet.