SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - The UC Santa Barbara Women's Soccer team picked up their first Big West victory of 2023 with a pair of goals from Jessica Tamayo. The 2-1 victory against UC Riverside on Thursday night is the Gauchos' fifth win in a row against the Highlanders. The win improved UC Santa Barbara's record to 3-4-6 overall and 1-2-1 in Big West play.

"Getting a win and a first win in conference on a Thursday night is great, we are very excited about that," said Coach Stumpf. "It was a tale of two halves again, I don't know what the formula is but the first half was outstanding. Our ball-movement was good, off-the-ball was good, we were clean with our passing and it showed. We scored two beautiful goals on ten shots and two corner kicks. After that we started to play tentatively."

The Gauchos got out to an early start and never looked back UC Santa Barbara took a 1-0 lead when Tamayo notched her first goal of the season in the third minute. After a failed clearance by a UC Riverside defender. Tamayo gathered the ball and took a shot from eight yards out. A low and left shot snuck past a defender and a diving goalkeeper to put UC Santa Barbara on top early.

The Gauchos tacked on another score on a goal from Tamayo -- her second goal of the game -- in the 29th minute, the goal was assisted by Olivia Howard. A shot by Lauren Helwig was saved but the rebound rolled too far away for the keeper and Howard gained possession. She found Tamayo just inside the left side of the box. Tamayo floated a ball to the high right side of the net, over the goalkeeper to extend the lead.

UC Riverside closed the gap to 2-1 on Spenser Gonzales' 54th-minute goal, assisted by Daphane Mendez. After the goal, the momentum started to shift in favor of the Highlanders. In the 84th minute, UC Riverside would send a shot towards Maddie Buckley that would pop over her and hit the crossbar. Fortunately for the Gauchos, the play was blown dead with the UCR attacker being offside.

After the offsides call the Gauchos were able to keep the Highlanders from any more chances and the 2-1 score would hold until the end of the game.

The Gauchos will be back at Harder Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 1 as they host Cal State Fullerton at noon. For those unable to attend the match will be streamed through ESPN+ with live stats avaliable through ucsbgauchos.com.