LOS ANGELES — The Big West meets The Big East in California this week, as the No. 25 UC Santa Barbara Baseball team will play four games against schools from the East Coast, beginning with a mid-week matchup against Villanova. Tuesday's game will be played at Page Stadium, where the Wildcats faced LMU over the weekend. The Gauchos will host UConn at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium in a three-game set this weekend.
 
WHEN AND WHERE TO WATCH
First pitch is set for 5:05 p.m. at Page Stadium, where admission to the game will be free. Live stats and an audio broadcast will be available through ucsbgauchos.com.
 
LAST TIME OUT
Santa Barbara made a third straight trip to Oregon over the weekend and won the series for a second consecutive year. With victories on Friday and Saturday, the Gauchos made it a seven-game win streak over the Ducks at PK Park, but that stretch was snapped in Sunday's game. Matt Ager continued his personal dominance over Oregon on Friday, striking out eight Ducks over 6 1/3 innings without allowing an extra-base hit or an earned run. Brendan Durfee continued his strong start to life in Division I, hitting .400 on the weekend with two doubles, and Jonathan Mendez marked his first career start with an RBI double on Sunday.
 
SERIES HISTORY
Santa Barbara and Villanova have never met before, making Tuesday's matchup the Gauchos' second against a new opponent this season. Santa Barbara won its first-ever game against Campbell in the season opener, 20-8, improving their record when playing an opponent for the first time under Andrew Checketts to 18-3. In their history, the Gauchos are 9-2 against current Big East members.
 
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE GAUCHOS
Through the first 10 games of a season where even the Santa Barbara coaching staff was unsure of what to expect from their team, the Gauchos' batting order has been carried by a handful of pleasant surprises. Santa Barbara's top hitter by average, Jessada Brown, has started six straight games after recording just eight at-bats in all of 2023. Through 26 at-bats this season, Brown is batting .385 and hit his first career home run at Pepperdine last Tuesday. Division-III transfer Brendan Durfee is batting .325 and has started every game in his first year at the Division-I level. Nick Oakley, who hit just .197 last year, is batting .333 and is already 50 percent of the way to matching his RBI total from 2023, having driven in a team-high 11 runs so far in 2024. Newcomer Reiss Calvin is still waiting to break out in the hit column, but he has no problem taking bases. Calvin's 11 walks and five hit-by-pitches both lead the team, and his four stolen bases are second on the squad, behind just Ivan Brethowr, who has five without being caught.
On the mound, the Gaucho pitching staff has started to deliver the performances expected of them after a shaky start to the season. Matt Ager battled through the rain in Eugene to deliver his first quality start of the year, and Mike Gutierrez made it two in a row with his six innings of two-run ball on Saturday. Freshmen Cole Tryba and Jackson Flora have both played key roles out of the Gaucho bullpen, appearing against all four of Santa Barbara's opponents this season, but both suffered through their first bad outings of the year last week.
 
Flora is set to take the mound for his first collegiate start on Tuesday, which would make him just the fifth Gaucho to start a game this season. The tall righty was named D1Baseball's Big West Preseason Freshman Pitcher of the Year and has drawn comparisons to his fellow Foothill HS alumn, Ager. Flora started the year with four scoreless innings of relief, including a three-inning save at Sacramento State in which he struck out the last seven batters he faced. His only bad outing came at Pepperdine last Tuesday, when he took the loss after giving up four runs, two of them earned, in just 1/3 of an inning.
 
SCOUTING THE WILDCATS
Villanova comes into Tuesday's game after earning just its second win of the season on Sunday, defeating Loyola Marymount, 8-4, to avoid being swept by the Lions. All nine of the Wildcats' games this year have been full of runs, with the lowest combined score of any Villanova game being eight (three times), and the highest being 19 (two times). They have allowed double-digit runs three times, though the most they allowed last weekend was seven.
 
Of the Wildcat hitters to appear in every game this year, none has a batting average over .270 nor a slugging percentage over .550, and only two players — Jack O'Reilly and Scott Shaw — have homered this season. Villanova's Dylan Dennis is batting .545 with an on-base plus slugging percentage of 1.219, but he has not featured since their season-opening series at Incarnate Word. The only other Wildcat with a batting average of .300 is outfielder Shane Solari. Solari has only played in four games, but got his first hits of the season last weekend, going 3-for-7 across the first two games at LMU.
 
On the mound, Villanova is yet to set a definitive weekend rotation, with six Wildcats making at least one start through their first three series. Luke Matta is set to become the seventh different starter of the season on Tuesday. A right-handed sophomore, Matta comes in with 9.00 ERA in just two innings of work this season. In his most recent outing on Friday, he gave up one run in two innings, striking out four LMU batters while allowing three hits.
 
UP NEXT
The Gauchos' week of Big East opponents continues at the weekend, as Santa Barbara will welcome UConn to Caesar Uyesaka Stadium for a three-game series March 8-10. Friday's game will be the Gauchos' home opener.