SANTA BARBARA, Calif. —  The No. 13 UC Santa Barbara Baseball team celebrated their fifth Big West Championship with a five-home run fireworks show in their 12-3 win over UC Riverside Thursday night, securing the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Regionals and taking one more step toward hosting one themselves. Ryan Gallagher played his ace role as usual, hurling seven innings and earning his ninth win of the season on the mound. At the plate, Aaron Parker, Jonah Sebring, Justin Trimble, Ivan Brethowr and Nick Oakley provided the longballs.
 
FROM HEAD COACH ANDREW CHECKETTS
On the team's performance Thursday night: "We've played from behind the last three wins, the last two at Northridge and then here," Checketts said. "I thought we came out a little bit tight, you know, we tried to get the guys focused on just playing baseball, just play the game, don't play the scoreboard, don't play the standings. That's hard to do. There was some tension there, we got out of character there on the defensive side a bit, had a couple bad at-bats early, but I thought the guys did a really good job of getting through it, getting back into character and playing better baseball. Gally settled down after that, he tried a little too hard when that inning got going. Fun to see a freshman go out there and close it out."
 
On winning a fifth Big West Championship: "It's been a long year," Checketts said. "The kids did a really fantastic job; obviously my heart's heavy with my dad not being here. The guys have played magnificent, they've had to deal with a lot of adversity getting to this point, and I'm really proud of them."
 
HOW IT HAPPENED
For six of his seven innings on the mound, Gallagher was his dominant self, tallying seven strikeouts while allowing just two earned runs on the night. He held the Highlanders hitless through his first three innings, with Parker catching a runner stealing to wipe away a one-out error in the top of the third.
 
Parker also helped his battery-mate out at the plate, providing the first run of the game on a solo home run to lead off the bottom of the second. The Gauchos' backstop credited Checketts for making the call on both plays; ordering the pitch-out that caught the runner in the top of the third and also predicting exactly what pitch was coming when Parker strode to the plate to start the second.
 
The only inning that caused Gallagher any trouble was the fourth, in which UCR plated all three of their runs. A single-single-double sequence with one out drove across the first Highlander run to tie the game at 1-1, then an error gave the visitors a 2-1 lead with still just the one out. That meant a lineout to right field turned into a sacrifice fly rather than the end of the inning, and UCR had a 3-1 lead. Gallagher did bounce back to end the frame with a punchout, and he continued that momentum when he came back out for the fifth, stranding a runner at third after a leadoff single.
 
The Gaucho offense took over in the bottom of the fifth, tying the game with some good hitting and aggressive baserunning. Trimble led off with a single, then Jonathan Mendez reached on a comebacker that bounced off the pitcher's glove. A wild pitch gave both of them an extra 90 feet, and Trimble scored on a passed ball. Zander Darby's sacrifice fly drove in Mendez to level the scores at 3-3.
 
Gallagher fired a shutdown, one-two-three sixth inning, and that was all the momentum Santa Barbara needed. Sebring led off the home half of the frame with a no-doubt home run well over the 25-foot net in left field, then LeTrey McCollum showed off his wheels after a single. The right fielder stole second, then took third on a passed ball. After all that running, he enjoyed a leisurely trot home thanks to Trimble's line-drive homer to right. The Gauchos led, 6-3, but were not done, with Mendez getting hit by a pitch before Brethowr launched a towering shot of his own, also clearing the left-field netting to make it 8-3.
 
Gallagher finished his duties for the evening with another one-two-three frame in the seventh, and the Gaucho offense tacked on an extra run in their half of that inning; Trimble's single scored McCollum from second after the latter missed his first career home run by no more than a foot, having to settle for a long double.
 
Cole Tryba relieved Gallagher for the eighth, stranding a runner at third, then Oakley homered with two men on in front of him to stretch the lead to 12-3 in the bottom half of the inning. A hit batter was the only blemish on Tryba's ledger for the ninth, with Oakley handling a grounder to record the final out and cue the dogpile.  
 
FROM THE STUDENT ATHLETES
Ivan Brethowr on winning his first conference championship: "To be honest, it takes me back to last year, which didn't end how we wanted," Brethowr said. "It's all worth it. I'm so proud of this team, we play our game, we'll stand up to anybody, so I'm ready to keep going. This is just the beginning."
 
Brethowr on his role as the Gauchos' lead-off hitter: "It's my favorite thing to do," Brethowr said. "It's extremely special to me that our coaching staff and my teammates trust me to do that. I love being able to set the tone for the game, first at-bat."
 
Aaron Parker on winning his second Big West crown with the Gauchos: "My freshman year we got to do it, but not a lot of this junior class really felt a part of that since we had such a heavy older group of guys," Parker said. "This year we got to take it for ourselves."
 
Parker on his three years at UC Santa Barbara: "Growth," Parker said. "It means the freaking world, I came in a cocky little guy, cocky 17-year-old, and I had to get to work, we all had to get to work, everybody included. When we got to work, we knew good things were going to happen. We have talent, and it means a lot more than a lot of people think."
 
Nick Oakley on the Gauchos' ability to come from behind and win: "I think it just comes from the fall. We didn't have a field, and we did a lot of hard stuff in the fall, and it taught us you're never out of it, we can come back from anything, and we never feel like we're out of a game."
 
Oakley on his home run: "I thought I was going to bunt, honestly, but he was throwing a lot of off-speed so I just found something up in the zone that I could handle and I got it, first pitch."
 
BY THE NUMBERS

• With Thursday's win, UC Santa Barbara clinched its fifth Big West Championship, three of which have come in the last five seasons. Each of the last two have been clinched at home against UC Riverside.
• Jonah Sebring, Justin Trimble and Ivan Brethowr are the first three Gauchos to all homer in the same inning this season; the last Santa Barbara trio to do so was Christian Kirtley, Jared Sundstrom and Aaron Parker at Oregon in 2023, a feat which had not been accomplished since 2009 prior to last season's trip to Eugene.
• After the Gauchos — a team which had five five-home run games last season — went the first 13 weeks of 2024 without a five-homer game, they have hit five long balls in each of their last two series openers. Brethowr, Parker, and Trimble were involved in both.

 
UP NEXT
With the conference title and automatic berth to the NCAA Regionals in hand, the Gauchos now have two games to achieve two program firsts: finishing the season unbeaten at home and hosting an NCAA Regional at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium. Two games against the Highlanders stand between them and that first goal, the first of which is at 4:35 p.m. on Friday, May 24. Most experts agree that should the Gauchos complete a sweep of UCR, they will at the very least be strong candidates for selection as one of 16 host sites. Friday's game will be broadcast live on ESPN+ with live stats and an audio broadcast available through ucsbgauchos.com.