UCSB Baseball made the trip down to Westwood and came away with a statement victory, shutting out No. 1-ranked UCLA for a 4-0 victory on Tuesday at Jackie Robinson Field.
The Gaucho win snapped a nation-best 27-game winning streak for the Bruins, whose last loss had come on Feb. 24 against San Diego State.
“Midweeks are different — I don’t want to downplay it, our guys did a really good job — midweeks are obviously different than weekends,” UCSB head coach Andrew Checketts said. “You see a lot of upsets that happen, but our guys played well, and that’s a good team.
“I think we’ve got a good team, and it’s not very often you get to play the number-one-ranked team in the country at their place and win.”
The first two innings of the game went scoreless, as UCSB starter Calvin Proskey kept the potent UCLA offense off the board in the early stages.
The Gauchos opened the scoring in the top of the third on three straight hits as Kosciusko and Esquer reached before Rowan Kelly roped a two-run single into left-center field for the 2-0 lead.
After Proskey finished off his third straight scoreless frame, UCSB head coach Andrew Checketts handed the ball over to AJ Krodel out of the bullpen.
Krodel answered the call, firing 3 ⅓ scoreless innings while allowing just two hits and striking out four batters along the way.
Meanwhile, the Gaucho offense was held off the board until the top of the eighth inning when it struck for two more runs.
Kelly singled to open the frame and, following a Barrett sacrifice bunt, Vasseur deposited an RBI double down the right-field line to score Kelly and extend the lead to 3-0.
Two batters later, Beazizo came through with a two-run RBI single to bring Vasseur home and make it a 4-0 lead heading into the bottom of the eighth.
From there, Cole Tryba, who took over for Krodel in the seventh, finished off the win for the Gauchos with back-to-back scoreless frames.
Tryba struck out five Bruins in his 2 ⅔ innings of work to earn his second save of the season and give Krodel his third win.
UCSB (23-11, 10-5 Big West) will look to take this momentum swing into its Big West series on the road this weekend against UC Irvine. The series opener is set for Friday at 6 p.m. at Anteater Ballpark.