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STANFORD, Calif. - The 20th-ranked Big West baseball champion UC Santa Barbara got a pair of two-run home runs, but they weren’t enough as second-ranked host Stanford scored in five of the last six innings and pulled out an 8-4 decision in the second elimination contest of its Stanford Regional on Klein Field at Sunken Diamond on Sunday.
With the result, the third-seeded Gauchos conclude their outstanding 2022 campaign with an overall record of 44-14. Top-seeded Stanford, the No. 2 national seed, improves to 43-15. The Cardinal had dropped into the elimination game via 5-2 loss to second-seeded Texas State on Saturday night, which snapped a 17-game win streak for the Pac-12 regular-season and tournament champions. They must now defeat the Bobcats twice, on Sunday and Monday night, both at 7 p.m., to advance to a Super Regional. Texas State needs to win just once to move on.
Big West Freshman Pitcher of the Year Ryan Gallagher ducked around a double to lead off the game by Brock Jones with two strikeouts and a groundout. The Cardinal produced a pair of singles around a flyout to begin the second, but Gallagher escaped again with two more flyouts.
UCSB, the designated home team, took the lead in the third as Blake Klassen drew a four-pitch walk with one away, and with two gone, fellow sophomore Nick Vogt lifted a 1-2 pitch out to left center for his seventh home run of the season and second of the weekend.
Stanford punched right back in the fourth, opening the frame with a first-pitch triple into the right field corner by Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Braden Montgomery and an opposite-field RBI single through the right side by Kody Huff on Gallagher’s second offering. Two more singles over the next three tosses, the latter of the bunt variety, loaded the bases, still with nobody out. The Gauchos to their credit were able to prevent the massive inning, as Gallagher struck out the next batter, Adam Crampton’s sacrifice fly leveled the score at 2-2, and Jones, the Cardinal’s star at the top of the order, fouled out to end it.
Tommy Troy started the fifth with an opposite-field double to right, and Stanford took its first lead of the contest on Huff’s two-out, two-strike single up the middle.
UCSB regained a 4-3 edge through a two-out rally in its half of the fifth. Vogt’s infield single preceded Kyle Johnson’s two-run home run. Like Vogt, the blast was his second of the regional and seventh on the year.
The sixth began with two single around the Gauchos’ first pitching change. Crampton laid down the sacrifice bunt, and Jones dumped an opposite-field, two-run double into the left field corner as Stanford went back up, 5-4. A two-out infield error scored Jones from third for 6-4.
The seventh started out almost identical to the sixth, with two Cardinal base-runners ahead of a bunt to move them both into scoring position. The hosts tacked on a seventh tally off of a sacrifice fly.
Stanford had its first two batters reach for a third consecutive inning in the eighth, and with men at the corners, a double-play ball made it 8-4.
Broc Mortensen worked a 13-pitch walk to begin the last half, and scooted over to third on Klassen’s one-out double to deep center. A strikeout and Vogt’s flyout deep to Jones in center ended the game.
Gallagher went five-plus innings and surrendered four runs on a season-high-tying 10 hits. The right-hander out of Granite Bay in Northern California struck out seven and did not issue a walk. He set down the top of the Stanford lineup in order in the third on two swinging strikeouts around a groundout. Nick Welch (4-4) was pinned with the loss.
The Gauchos finished 13-3 in games in which Gallagher saw the hill. They had won on each of the previous eight occasions. Christian Kirtley went 0-for-4, snapping his lengthy reached-base streak at 45 contests.
Sophomore Stanford southpaw Drew Dowd gave up two runs on one hit, a hit-by-pitch and two walks over 3.0 frames, striking out five. He put together the day’s first 1-2-3 inning in the second. Quinn Mathews (9-1) took over to begin the fourth and threw the remaining 6.0 frames with two runs against him on four hits, a hit-by-pitch and three walks. The junior left-hander’s first of three strikeouts, to open a 1-2-3 seventh, was his team-best 100th of 2022.
Huff wound up 4-for-5 with two runs and two RBI offensively, while the catcher also threw out Gaucho Jason Willow trying to steal third in the sixth for just the third time on 18 attempts this season. Jones, a 2021 All-American, was 3-for-5 with two doubles, two runs and two RBI.
UCSB is 20-31 all-time against Stanford. The two teams had not met in over a decade, since the Cardinal took a three-game series at Sunken Diamond, 2-1, in 2010. Stanford had won the only two previous postseason matchups, also at a Stanford Regional, in 1983 (11-5) and 1987 (12-5) to end the Gauchos’ season both those times as well.
The Gauchos are 16-27 (.372) over their 13 NCAA Championship appearances, including 15-25 in regionals. They are 3-10 in their five trips to a Stanford Regional. UCSB went 23-9 away from home in 2022 and 20-8 in true road dates.