IRVINE, Calif. --- UC Irvine junior Keston Hiura had 14 hits in his last four games to raise his season batting average to .442 to lead the team, Big West, and the entire NCAA.
Hiura was 1 of 5 hitters to finish with an average over .400, and his .442 average was 17 points higher than the second-best average of .425. Only 2 hitters since 2011 have hit higher than .442, and both played less games than Hiura's 56. Hiura did all this in just 199 official at-bats as he was the only player in the nation to hit over .400 while drawing 50 base on balls.
Those 50 base on balls helped raise his on-base percentage to an NCAA-leading .567 mark, 35 points higher than the next best hitter, meaning every other time he stepped to the plate, he would at least reach base, something he has built on from his sophomore season when he built a streak of 52 straight games reaching base to also lead the entire nation. Over his career spanning 165 games, he failed to reach base in nine of them.
When he did get a hit, he made it count busting out a team-high eight home runs to leave him with a .693 slugging percentage, 14th-best in the nation. In addition, he clubbed 24 doubles to rank seventh in the nation. Hiura's total of 88 hits was the 11th-highest total in the NCAA. To put that into context, every other player with at least 75 hits had over 200 official at-bats. He had a 19-game hit streak as a freshman which stands as the 6th-longest in UCI history, and put together two streaks of 13 games as a junior. Hiura had multiple hits in 30 games this season, over half of the team's season, putting up 24 two-hit games, 4 three-hit games, 2 four-hit games, and a 5-hit game in the season finale, the second 5-hit game of his career.
In the highly-competitive Big West, Hiura led the conference in slugging percentage, by 39 points, batting average, by 74 points hitting an amazing .482 in Big West contests, and on-base percentage by a whopping 137 points. He finished as the leader in hits, doubles, and walks, finished tied for first in total bases, second in runs scored, third in runs batted in, fifth in home runs and hit by pitch, and even 12th in stolen bases. Hiura earned Big West Player of the Week honors in the last week of the regular season, his fourth overall dating back to his freshman campaign.
It goes without saying that Hiura has solidified his mark in the UC Irvine record books with all his impressive numbers. The .442 average is by-and-far the single season Anteater record as he joins Mike Nagle, who hit .402 in 1981, and Tom Spence, who hit .403 in 1971, as the only Anteaters to hit over .400 in a season. His average sets a new record overtaking Spence's mark that has stood for 46 years. For a career, Hiura finishes hitting .375, second-best behind Tom Baine's .383, and highest for a for an athlete that played at least three seasons, and his also second with his 22 home runs and .581 slugging percentage. His 236 hits place him seventh all-time, his 129 runs place him eighth all-time, his 92 walks place him in a tie for seventh, and his 135 RBI put him sixth in the records. He becomes the all-time leader with 54 doubles, and he did it thanks to a 24-double season this year tying him for the most in a single season with Taylor Holiday who hit 24 in the 64-game campaign during the 2007 College World Series run. He sits in a tie for 6th all-time for hits in a season, while his .693 slugging percentage Ken Washington's .673 mark set back in 1978. He also becomes the third Anteater to walk 50 or more times in a season joining Fred Combs' 50 in 1990 and Brady Anderson's all-time mark of 52 set in 1985. Hiura was even walked an astronomical 12 times during the 2017 season which is more than any other Anteater has gotten during their entire careers.
All of this has set up for some big-time awards to add to his already sizable collection. Hiura was named the Big West Freshman Field Player of the Year in 2015 to go along with All-Big West First Team and All-West Region status, and appeared on four Freshman All-American teams. He entered 2016 as a Preseason All-American on two publications, and grew that to five entering the 2017 campaign, and he's already matched his 2016 accolades by earned a spot in the Golden Spikes Award Preseason and Midseason Watch Lists both as a sophomore and junior, collegiate baseball's version of the Heisman Trophy.
