A surge down the stretch of the regular season by the UC Santa Barbara baseball team culminated in a Big West Conference regular-season championship.
The Gauchos won their final nine conference games and clinched the regular-season championship with a 5-3 victory over UC Riverside on Saturday. UCSB will be the top seed at the Big West Baseball Championship tournament next week.
“We met after the Fullerton weekend when we lost two out of three and we actually met right out in front of that ]conference champions] sign as a group and talked about some of the history of the program and some of the teams that have been behind or have to win a bunch of games at the end,” Checketts said. “We mapped it out and said, ‘You guys can do it, but you’re going to have to almost win out,’ and we did. We won nine straight conference games after that.”
After falling behind 3-0 in the second inning on a three-run home run by UC Riverside (15-37, 10-20), Santa Barbara steadily regained control behind Kellan Montgomery’s composure on the mound and timely offensive production.
Montgomery, making his final regular-season home appearance, matched a career high with nine strikeouts over 5 2/3 innings. The right-hander recovered after the early setback and delivered several key outs, including escaping a dangerous fifth inning after Riverside put a runner on second with no outs.
That escape proved pivotal.
In the bottom half of the fifth, the Gauchos ignited their comeback. Jonathan Mendez opened the inning with a solo home run to left field before Liam Barrett reached on a bunt single. Vargas then electrified the crowd, crushing the first pitch he saw over the right-field wall for a game-tying two-run homer — his 10th of the season and 20th career home run at UCSB.
Moments later, William Vasseur doubled into the gap and Rowan Kelly delivered the go-ahead RBI single through the left side to put Santa Barbara ahead 4-3.
Karliner added insurance in the sixth inning, launching a solo home run to left field for his ninth homer of the season and 43rd of his collegiate career, including his previous years at Cal State Dominguez Hills.
The Gauchos’ bullpen preserved the lead from there. Chase Hoover retired seven consecutive batters across the sixth, seventh and eighth innings before running into trouble in the ninth. With two runners aboard and one out, freshman reliever Josh Jannicelli entered and struck out the final two hitters using his signature changeup to earn his third save of the season and seal the championship-clinching win.
Jannicelli, in his first season with the program, said the team’s chemistry has been a defining factor in the Gauchos’ success.
“We have a great team structure, good team chemistry, so it makes it all the better winning a game like this,” he said.
Karliner said his late home run carried extra meaning after narrowly missing several opportunities earlier in the weekend.
“It was a big-time moment,” Karliner said. “We needed a couple insurance runs and we got one. This team is built with guys that have each other’s backs.”
With the regular season complete, UCSB now turns its attention to the Big West Championship tournament at Anteater Ballpark in Irvine. The Gauchos will open tournament play Thursday against the winner of the play-in game between Hawai‘i and Cal State Fullerton.
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