SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The UC Santa Barbara Baseball team will have to contend with the rain and the 'Bows this weekend, hosting Hawai'i in a three-game set from Friday, April 12 through Sunday, April 14 before rounding out this homestand against UCLA on Tuesday, April 16.
 
WHEN AND WHERE TO WATCH
Wet weather in the forecast has altered the schedule for Santa Barbara's series against the Rainbow Warriors, with the opening game on Friday now set to start at 3:35 p.m. Saturday and Sunday's games currently remain at 3:05 and 1:05 p.m., but those times are subject to change. Should no game be played Saturday, the Gauchos and Hawai'i will play a doubleheader on Sunday.
 
Santa Barbara's mid-week matchup with the Bruins remains unchanged and will begin at 4:35 p.m. on Tuesday, April 16. Fans can catch every UC Santa Barbara home game live on ESPN+ and follow along with live stats and an audio broadcast on ucsbgauchos.com.
 
LAST TIME OUT
Santa Barbara opened this, their third homestand of the season, on Tuesday with a win over Loyola Marymount, 8-6. Ivan Brethowr powered the offense with two home runs and a total of five RBI on the night, while Cole Tryba worked four scoreless innings to earn a long-haul save.
 
SERIES HISTORIES
The Gauchos' rivalry with Hawai'i is one of the younger ones in The Big West, with Friday's series opener set to be just the 50th meeting between these two teams. Hawai'i holds a one-game edge in the all-time series, but the Rainbow Warriors have won each of the last four meetings, including sweeping the series in Hawai'i last season. The Gauchos had won the four series prior to that three-game set last May, and Santa Barbara is 8-4 at home against Hawai'i under Head Coach Andrew Checketts.
 
Tuesday night's matchup with the Bruins will round out the home-and-home season series as the 103^rd all-time meeting between UC Santa Barbara and UCLA. The Bruins have won each of the last five meetings and 61 all time. That stretch includes wins in each of the last two games held in Santa Barbara. The Gauchos last beat the Bruins in their home ballpark in 2020, 8-5.

ISLA VISTA COMMUNITY NIGHTS
UC Santa Barbara is celebrating the neighborhood it calls home during all Tuesday night games at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium this year with Isla Vista Community Nights. The Gauchos will wear special uniforms which read Isla Vista across the front and will welcome groups from throughout the community to the ballpark. On Tuesday, UC Santa Barbara will proudly welcome the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District to the ballpark and celebrate all they do for the community.
 
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE GAUCHOS
Home Sweet Home
The Gauchos have been red hot at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium this season, winning each of their first 10 home games by a combined score of 80-36, batting .295 as a team while holding their opponents to just a .196 average. Aaron Parker has been the hottest of the Santa Barbara hitters at home, batting .500 in his home ballpark with an OPS of 1.218. Parker is one of three Gauchos with an OPS over 1.000 at home, with Justin Trimble at 1.084 and Jonah Sebring at 1.750 in limited at-bats. Trimble leads the team in home runs with six on the season, but Sebring and Ivan Brethowr are the Gauchos who have left their home yard the most often, homering three times each at home.
 
The Gaucho pitching staff, which has scuffled on the road this season, is plenty comfortable on their home mound, pitching to a 3.26 ERA in 91 innings. In those 10 games, Santa Barbara's staff has struck out 113 batters while walking just 32. That strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.53 is a significant improvement over their full-season ratio of just 2.07.
 
Lefties Leading the Offense
The Gaucho offense has leaned on its southpaws this season, with the team leaders in hits, RBI and home runs all swinging from the left-handed batter's box. Brendan Durfee has been a tremendous addition from the transfer portal, playing in all 28 games so far with a .348 batting average, 20 RBI and a total of 40 hits. He is also one of three Gauchos with multiple starts and a slugging percentage north of .500. His fellow catcher Parker is the only Santa Barbara batter with a better average than Durfee's, hitting .434 through his 18 games, having missed 10 due to injury. Parker also has 20 RBI and is slugging a massive .605, logging multiple hits in 12 of his 18 games.
 
Justin Trimble has played a major role in the power department this season as well, clobbering a team-high six homers on his way to driving in 23 runs. Trimble's 17 walks are more than any Gaucho not named Reiss Calvin, and his 11 times being hit by a pitch lead the team outright. The only man with more RBI than Trimble is Nick Oakley, the homegrown veteran experiencing a major resurgence in his senior year. After batting just .197 in 2023, Oakley is hitting .314 this season with a career-best 30 RBI, the sixth most in The Big West.
 
The Pitching Equation
Ryan Gallagher has become Santa Barbara's Friday starter, taking the ball for the Gauchos' last two series openers. He is coming off his worst outing of the year at UC Irvine but has been stellar at home, allowing just three earned runs on a total of seven hits over 20 innings of work at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium. He is one of the hardest pitchers to hit in the nation, ranking 10th among all Division-I pitchers with just 5.23 hits allowed per nine innings.
 
The Gauchos' Saturday and Sunday starters are yet to be announced, but expect Mike Gutierrez to be one of those two names. The veteran lefty has started every weekend so far for Santa Barbara, winning all five of his decisions. The crafty lefty owns the Gauchos' best ERA this season, 2.86, having shut down UC Irvine's high-scoring offense for six innings in his last outing. By earning his 18th win in 21 decisions as a Gaucho last Saturday, Gutierrez tied the program record for career winning percentage as a pitcher. He is also closing in on strikeout number 200 in Blue and Gold, coming into the weekend with 191.
 
Matt Ager is also approaching the 200 K mark, entering the weekend with 194. Ager is a candidate to take the mound on Sunday despite his struggles this season, though Tyler Bremner could also return to the starting rotation for the series finale. Bremner has been the first arm out of the bullpen most weekends this season and, like Gallagher, is lights-out at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium, allowing just one earned run on three hits in 11 home innings this year.
 
SCOUTING THE RAINBOW WARRIORS
Hawai'i comes into the weekend a game under .500 in Big West play (4-5) and 19-11 overall, though two of those wins came against Division-II programs, Hawai'i Pacific and Hawai'i Hilo. This weekend's series will conclude just the second trip to the mainland for the Rainbow Warriors, who are 7-2 in nine games outside their home state. Both of those losses game at Big West opponents, Cal State Bakersfield and UC Davis.
 
The Rainbow Warriors' biggest strengths are walks, both drawing them at the plate and limiting them on the mound. Hawai'i ranks 10th in the country with 208 walks drawn on the season and seventh with just 3.10 walks allowed per nine innings. As a result, they also rank 18th nationally in on-base percentage, 25th nationally in WHIP and 34th in ERA, with the 19th-best fielding percentage to boot.
 
Those feats are made even more impressive by the fact that the Rainbow Warriors have just one consistent starter, lefty Randy Abshier, who will take the ball on Friday. Alex Giroux is the only other Rainbow Warrior to pitch 30+ innings, starting four of his 11 appearances. Six other pitchers have also made a start for Hawai'i this year.
 
On offense, the Rainbow Warriors are led by The Big West's top four walk drawers, Ben Zeigler-Namoa, Matt Muira, Elijah Ickes and Austin Machado. Machado's team-leading .493 on-base percentage makes him one of two Hawai'i hitters with an OPS over 1.000, alongside team batting average leader Jordan Donahue. Expect Hawai'i to play good situational baseball; they rank fourth in the country with 24 sacrifice flies and 31^st with 21 sac bunts.
 
SCOUTING THE BRUINS
Since the Gauchos last saw UCLA, the Bruins have just two wins in eight games, defeating LMU on April 2 and salvaging one of three games against Oregon on April 6. UCLA will play a three-game set at Washington over the weekend.
 
Though they put up 13 runs against the Gauchos in the first meeting of the season, the UCLA offense has generally been quite tame, averaging just 4.9 runs per game, 270^th ranked scoring output in the country. Their team batting average of .255 ranks 230^th, as just three Bruins are batting .300 or better, and all of them are catchers. The full backstop triumvirate of Quintt Landis, Blake Balsz and Cashel Dugger did each appear in the last meeting between these two teams. It was Payton Brennan who stole the show for UCLA in that game though, going 7-for-7 on the night. That one game accounts for 1/3 of Brennan's hit total for this season. Brennan, Landis and Roch Cholowsky each hit their only home runs of the season against the Gauchos.
 
On the mound, UCLA's team stats are slightly better than their offensive numbers, ranking in the low-to-mid 100s nationally in most areas. The Gauchos saw most Bruin pitchers pretty well last time, with the exceptions of veteran righty Chris Aldrich and rubber-armed Cody Delvecchio, the latter of whom has pitched in 16 of the Bruins' 30 games. Rashad Ruff leads UCLA in appearances, coming out of the bullpen 19 times this season. Santa Barbara hit Ruff around last time they saw him, scoring three runs on five hits. Outfielder JonJon Vaughns got the win over the Gauchos in March and has pitched twice more since that meeting, going three innings against Oregon and two against Pepperdine, allowing a total of four runs on five hits over his seven innings of work this season.
 
UP NEXT
Following this homestand, the Gauchos will hit the road for four games, playing a Big West series at UC Davis April 19-21 before concluding their home-and-home set against LMU in Los Angeles on April 23. Santa Barbara returns home on April 26 to begin a three-game series against Cal State Fullerton, including a nationally televised matchup on Saturday, April 27.