DAVIS, Calif. — The UC Santa Barbara Baseball team (14-4, 4-2 Big West) got off to a slow start and was never able to fully recover on Sunday, dropping the rubber match against UC Davis (9-9, 3-3 Big West) by a score of 10-6. Kellan Montgomery collected his 200^th collegiate strikeout but also took the loss, while Corey Nunez's 4-for-5 day and a three-run eighth inning were not enough to complete a comeback.
 
HOW IT HAPPENED
Montgomery took no time to hit his milestone, striking out the first Aggie he faced to bring up 200 in his collegiate career, and after picking off a one-out walk at first, he collected K number 201 to complete a clean inning. However, no sooner had the ink dried on K number 202 in the scorebook to start the bottom of the second, a solo home run put the home side in the lead.
 
Another solo homer started a three-run third inning for Davis, with three singles and a double amounting to a 4-0 lead. Colin Beazizo's bunt single started a rally that got one of those runs back for Santa Barbara in the top of the fourth, with Nunez's double helping load the bases for Rowan Kelly, who forced home the score with a walk. The teams went back-and-forth from there, a double and a single re-establishing the Aggies' four-run lead in the bottom of the fourth, only for the Gauchos to again cut it to three in the top of the fifth. Jonathan Mendez led off that inning with a double down the left field line, and William Vasseur drove him in with a two-bagger of his own.
 
However, a four-run bottom of the sixth put Davis further in front. A single, two doubles, a hit batter and a triple made it 9-2, with Cade Goldstein's heads-up decision to throw home on a chopper back up the middle the only thing that kept the Aggies from hitting double digits in the frame.
 
Goldstein was involved again when the Gauchos started to chip away at their deficit in the top of the eighth. After Nunez reached on a two-out error, Cole Kosciusko's single into center kept the inning going, and Nate Vargas' pinch-hit RBI single made the score 9-3. After Kelly's fourth walk of the day loaded the bases, Goldstein delivered a two-RBI single to bring Santa Barbara back within so-called "slam range," down four runs at 9-5.
 
A double and a single in the bottom of the eighth put the Aggies back out of slam range at 10-5, and while the Gauchos did start the top of the ninth with a single from Max Stagg, a double play killed their momentum. Santa Barbara did manage to scratch across one run on a Kosciusko single, but with two outs it ended up being too little, too late.
 
UP NEXT
The Gauchos return home next weekend, March 20-22, to host Hawai'i in another Big West series.