Maui's Bryant Nakagawa comes home to score against Saint Louis in the last quarterfinal game at Les Murakami Stadium. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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MANOA — A league champion won't be a state champion this year.

Maui sent nine batters to the plate in a five-run fifth inning then survived a thrilling bottom of the seventh by stranding the potential winning run at first base in edging top-seeded Saint Louis, 8-6, Thursday in the fourth quarterfinal of the Wally Yonamine Foundation Division I state baseball tournament at Les Murakami Stadium.

Maui will take on Campbell in Friday's 7 p.m. semifinal, pitting teams nicknamed Sabers. The 4 p.m. semifinal features two Warriors teams: Kamehameha and Waiakea.

For the first time since 2009, a seeded team — a league champion — won't be in the semifinals.

Last year on their home island, the Sabers lost a heart-breaker to Pearl City, 1-0, in 10 innings in the first round at Iron Maehara Stadium. Second-seeded Baldwin was the only seeded team left in last year's semifinals en route to the state championship.

This year, the No. 7 Sabers (12-5) started the tournament without their ace pitcher Kyle Oshiro, who did not make the trip because of a stress fracture in this throwing arm, Maui coach Chase Corniel said.

But Thursday night, 5-foot-7 Micah Jio, a shortstop last year who moved to center field and was the team's third starter and reliever, threw five strong innings before putting the first two runners on in the bottom of the seventh with an 8-3 lead before giving way to Jyrah Lalim, who started the game at shortstop. Lalim gave up two doubles and hit two batters but got Makana Ontai to ground out to second to end the game.

"Micah stepped up big for us," Corniel said. "At first, we thought about going a different route for pitching. We all had a hunch as a coaching staff that we needed to make the right decision and put our senior on the hill."

Jio pitched five innings and was charged with five run, six hits and two walks with two strikeouts in getting credit for the win. He was 2 for 4 at the plate, beating out two grounders with his speed. He was robbed of a hit in the first inning when left fielder Hunter Peneueta made a diving catch in the left-center alley.

"It meant a lot that the coaches and the team trusted in me and they believed in me that I could do this," said Jio, who plans to play baseball and major in vascular technology at Oregon Institute of Technology. "So I took it heart and gave it my all tonight."

Saint Louis was outscored and outhit (11-9), but led in the far-right column: errors (3 to Maui's 1) that led to five unearned runs.

"One of the things we talked about before the game was that last column over there," Saint Louis coach George Gusman said. "The three errors. Everybody today that didn't fare well, that's the column that we won. We won that column with three errors and that was the ball game."

Chase Meilleur started for the Crusaders, pitching 4 1/3 innings, allowing seven runs, but only two earned, seven hits and a walk with one strikeout. Dylan Lum went 2 2/3 innings, allowing a run, four hits and a walk with one strikeout.

Statistically, Meilleur was Saint Louis' third-best pitcher with a 4-2 mark and a 2.79 earned run average. Dawson Yamaguchi, who pitched in Monday's Interscholastic League of Honolulu title game, is 6-1 with a 0.74 ERA and Lum is 4-1 with a 1.32 ERA. Meilleur was the most rested of the trio from the extended ILH playoffs that ended Monday.

"He was well-rested," Gusman said of Meilleur. "He wasn't as sharp; I'm not sure why. But he left it on the field. He has nothing to be ashamed of."

The Crusaders left everything they had on the field, only to see their rally fall short in the seventh after sending nine batters to the plate.

Jio walked lead-off hitter Keith Torres, who took second on Dylan Pagente's single to left. Jio was lifted after 94 pitches for Lalim, who got Daniel Stephens to ground to third for a force for the first out. After Matthew Wong flied out to left, Charlie Lopez doubled to left-center to score Pagente and Kai Perreira-Alquiza doubled home two runs to pull Saint Louis to 8-6. Lalim then hit Peneueta and Aaron Renaud to load the bases, but Makana Ontai swung at the first pitch and grounded out to second to end the game.

Saint Louis took a 2-0 lead off Jio in the first, scoring on Wong's run-scoring triple and Lopez's RBI single.

Maui tied the game in the third on two unearned runs. Jio beat out a single to third, took second on Bryant Nakagawa's sacrifice and reached third when Kao Mindoro reached on second baseman Pagente's fielding error. Mindoro stole second, but Waylon Golis-Bacos hit a comebacker to freeze the runners for the second out. Mikito Barkman then hit a flare to right-center, but center fielder Wong — he had just moved there from right after Stephens came out of the game — slipped and the ball fell in, scoring both runs. Earlier in the game, Stephens collided with left fielder Peneueta, who hung on to the ball after a diving catch to rob Jio of a hit. Stephens later re-entered the game as a pinch hitter.

Saint Louis took a 3-2 lead in the fourth on a two out, RBI single by Torres.

The roof caved in on the Crusaders in the top of the fifth, when Maui sent 10 batters to the plate to score five runs, chasing Meilleur from the game. Saint Louis committed two errors in the inning with Mindoro, Barkman, Kaipo Paschoal and Kainalu Tancayo hitting RBI singles and Lalim hitting a sacrifice fly.

The inning included a close play on an attempted force play at second on second baseman Pagente's throw to shortstop Torres. 

"I thought we had him at second," Gusman said. "I don't know what replay showed, but that turned the whole inning around. I hope the umpire was correct so we don't have to look back and say, ‘Whatever.'"

After the first inning, the Crusaders could not do enough against Jio.

"They're really tough," Jio said of Saint Louis. "All-stars up and down that lineup. I knew I had to throw strikes with my off-speed, then come with my fastball pretty hard, try to keep them off-balanced.