IRVINE, Calif. — With a week to go before the UC Santa Barbara Baseball team opens its 2026 season, the prognosis is officially in. The Big West announced that the Gauchos have topped its Preseason Baseball Coaches Poll, with ace pitcher Jackson Flora named to the preseason all-conference team. After a strong 2025 culminated with a USA Baseball Collegiate National Team invite, the junior right-hander enters 2026 as heir-apparent to last year's second overall pick in the Major League Baseball Draft, Tyler Bremner. Like Bremner in 2025 and Matt Ager in 2024, Flora has also earned a spot on USA Baseball's Golden Spikes Award Preseason Watchlist this season.
 
After winning their third Big West Championship over five seasons in 2024, the Gauchos finished fifth at the end of a tough 2025 campaign, bowing out of the first Big West Championship tournament since the 1990s earlier than expected. Regardless, five of the conference's 10 head coaches who could vote for the Gauchos to finish top-of-the-pile this year did. Santa Barbara topped the preseason poll by six points, ahead of rivals Cal Poly (five first place votes) in second and UC Irvine (one first place vote) four points further back in third. Cal State Fullerton and Hawai'i tied for fourth, making them the predicted participants in The Big West Championship play-in game that tripped the Gauchos up last season. UC San Diego was picked sixth, Long Beach State seventh, UC Davis eighth, CSUN ninth, Cal State Bakersfield 10^th and UC Riverside 11^th.
 
As for Flora, he headlines the pitcher-heavy Big West Preseason Coaches' Team, six of whose members do their work on the mound, four of them righties. Only one other member of the 11-player preseason all-conference squad joins Flora on the watchlist for the Golden Spikes Award, an honor given annually to the best amateur (college or high school) baseball player in the country: his left-handed counterpart from UC Irvine, Ricky Ojeda. Last season, Flora narrowly edged out Ojeda in the strikeout column, 86-83, while Ojeda had the upper hand in ERA by just 0.05 points. Flora commanded and controlled the zone better though, walking just 17 batters to Ojeda's 29. In terms of the Golden Spikes race, Flora is one of the elite few carrying the banner for the West Coast, one of just eight players from Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington on the 55-man list and one of only five pitchers in that group.
 
Flora and the Gauchos open their season on the road at No. 20 Southern Miss on Feb. 13, with their home opener the following week, Feb. 20 against Portland. Santa Barbara begins its pursuit of a sixth Big West Championship on March 6, when they will host Long Beach State. Single-game and season tickets are on sale now at ucsbgauchos.com/tickets or by calling the ticket office at (805) 893-UCSB(8272).