Something special is brewing at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium this season.
Tyler Bremner delivered an electric performance on the mound and the UC Santa Barbara baseball team completed a three-game sweep of UC San Diego with a 12-3 victory on Sunday afternoon.
“When our starting pitchers are on their game it feels like we have three Friday guys on the weekend,” said UC Santa Barbara coach Andrew Checketts of his stellar starting pitching duo of Ryan Gallagher, Mike Gutierrez and Bremner. “Bremner could certainly start on Friday at a lot of places.”
With the win, the Gauchos improved to 20-0 at home so far this season with their fourth consecutive weekend sweep in Big West Conference play. UC Santa Barbara now has a two game lead over UC Irvine in the Big West standings.
“I haven’t really talked about that much, in terms of scoreboard watching,” Checketts said. “I just tell them all of the cliche stuff, play good baseball and control what you can control.”
Despite the lopsided win for UC Santa Barbara, the visiting Tritons got on the board first in the top of the first inning. Emiliano Gonzalez drove in Nick Costello with a ground out to give UC San Diego a 1-0 lead.
However, after the first two batters of the game reached base Bremner went on to retire the next 19 batters he faced.
“(Bremner) had a good heater going, especially that second time through the order, he dialed it up a notch,” Checketts said. “I used to always say that about (Shane) Bieber, he could smell a win, he could smell it and go for it. Some guys get defensive and try not to screw it up, but once we got the lead he could smell the win and he put his foot on the gas.”
The UC Santa Barbara offense broke the game open with four runs in the bottom of the second inning. Ivan Brethowr accounted for the majority of the damage with a three-run homer over the netting in left field.
The Gauchos tacked on one run in the fourth inning and five more in the sixth inning, including a single into center field by Nick Oakley, that scored Brendan Durfee and Brethowr increasing the UC Santa Barbara lead to 7-1.
Overall Bremner pitched seven innings allowing two runs on two hits with eight strikeouts. Reed Moring followed that up with two innings on the mound in relief. He surrendered one run on three hits.
Freshman shortstop Jonathan Menedez closed the scoring for UC Santa Barbara with a two-run homer over the right field fence. The Gauchos pounded out 13 hits and finished with eight walks.
The Gauchos {31-12 overall, 17-4 Big West} will host Pepperdine in a non-conference contest on Tuesday beginning at 4:35 p.m. with their undefeated record at home still intact.