University of California, Santa Barbara

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Senior Days hardly come better than the ones Kellan Montgomery, Nate Vargas and Noah Karliner put together for the UC Santa Barbara Baseball team (37-16, 22-8 Big West) on Saturday. Montgomery set the tone on the mound and matched his career best with nine strikeouts, while Vargas and Karliner both hit crucial home runs, Vargas to tie the game and Karliner to add insurance in the Gauchos' 5-3 win over UC Riverside (15-37, 10-20 Big West). With the win, Santa Barbara clinched a share of The Big West Regular Season Championship and the no. 1 seed for next week's Big West Championship tournament in Irvine.
 
QUOTABLE
From head coach Andrew Checketts: "You know, we met, after the Fullerton weekend when we lost two of three," Checketts said. "We met out by that sign as a group and just talked about some of the history of the program and some of the teams that have been behind or had to win a bunch of games at the end. We talked about the 21 (conference) wins in a row here in 2024 to win the conference and mapped it out and said you guys can do it, you're just going to have to almost win out and they did. They won nine straight league games after that, had a lot of belief, a lot of hard-fought battles, today was another one of those. We were down, you know, we hang the slider and we're down 3-0 and we're like, 'oh crap,' but we just kept fighting and fighting and fighting.
 
That was a stressful game, I'm really glad that we have tomorrow off, we don't get a lot of off days in the season, so I'm looking forward to that and then we'll start working on scouting reports. Thankfully we've played everybody, that's the nice thing about a conference tournament. You go to a regional, you've got to do four scouting reports, that's quite time-consuming leading into it. We'll still need to freshen those up and go back over them, but it's teams that we've seen before so some of the heavy legwork on that has already been done."
 
From Josh Jannicelli: "Obviously it's awesome, it's my first year here and first year I'm part of the team," Jannicelli said. "We have a great team structure, good team chemistry, so makes it all the better, winning a game like this. It's been a crazy first season, obviously we're not done, but this is a nice point in the road."
 
From Noah Karliner: "(The home run) felt good because I've been missing a couple all weekend," Karliner said. "I think I was due for one and I finally got one for the boys. It was a big-time moment too, needed a couple of insurance runs and we got one, it's just been fun. The home run was awesome, but this team is built with guys that have each other's backs and I feel like that came to fruition this weekend, it was a great weekend and we just can't wait for next weekend."
 
HOW IT HAPPENED
Montgomery stormed through his first inning of work but hit a snag in the second, with a couple of singles and a three-run home run giving the Highlanders a 3-0 lead. The veteran bounced back with another dominant third, picking up two more strikeouts in a perfect inning. He was perfect again in the fourth, finishing that frame with his fifth K of the day.
 
The fifth inning proved to be the turning point in the game, and it started with a major moment on the mound. After allowing a leadoff double, Montgomery played hometown hero one last time, winning an eight-pitch at-bat for a strikeout, inducing a lineout to right and then picking up another strikeout to end the inning with no damage. In the bottom half, the Gaucho offense got some massive swings off. Jonathan Mendez led off the inning with a home run to left, chasing UCR's starting pitcher. Liam Barrett got aboard with a near-perfect drag bunt for a base hit, then Vargas delivered his Senior Day moment. The Gaucho backstop crushed the first pitch he saw for a no-doubt, game-tying home run to right field, his 10^th of the season and 20^th as a Gaucho. Fellow senior William Vasseur followed that with a double to the gap, and after a pitching change, Santa Barbara's top hitter put the home team on top. Rowan Kelly punched a full-count pitch through the left side of the infield and Vasseur came home to give the Gauchos a 4-3 lead.
 
Montgomery got the first two outs of the sixth, but after a single, he turned the ball over to fellow Santa Barbara native Chase Hoover. The lefty took care of business, getting the final out of the frame with just one pitch.
 
In the Gaucho half of the sixth, it was Karliner's turn to come up clutch. He got every stitch of a 2-2 pitch, blasting it out to left field to increase the lead to 5-3. The long ball is Karliner's ninth of his one season in Santa Barbara but the 43^rd of his NCAA career after a number of successful years at Division-II Cal State Dominguez Hills.
 
Hoover was perfect in both the seventh and eighth to protect his side's two-run lead but got into a sticky spot after two singles and just one out in the top of the ninth. So, to finish a weekend that started with a swan song from their current ace, the Gauchos turned to the heir apparent. Josh Jannicelli and his "Bugs Bunny" changeup entered from the bullpen, and it took him just eight of those devastating off-speed pitches to rack up a pair of strikeouts, his third save of the season and The Big West Regular Season Championship.
 
UP NEXT
Santa Barbara is now on to The Big West Championship tournament, hosted at Anteater Ballpark on the campus of UC Irvine next weekend. The Gauchos will play their first game on Thursday, May 21, at 1 p.m. against the winner of the play-in game between no. 4 seed Hawai'i and no. 5 seed Cal State Fullerton, which will take place on May 20.