No. 25 UCSB Men’s Soccer Falls to Oregon State at Home, 3-1

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The No. 25 UC Santa Barbara Men’s Soccer team committed a pair of crucial mistakes against Oregon State on Sunday night, giving the Beavers two goals far easier than they should have been.

Those errors cost the Gauchos, as the Blue and Gold fell, 3-1, despite heroic efforts from Peleg Brown and Donovan Sessoms. Brown put home a pair of emphatic game-tying goals, but the first was called back after video review.

Sessoms provided the assist on Brown’s goal that stood, part of a night where the forward played like a man possessed, hounding the Beavers’ back line in search of any opportunity to create chances.

“Well, we gifted them two goals,” UCSB head coach Tim Vom Steeg said. “The two games we’ve lost this year have come off of not them, but us. Yeah, a guy hit a really good shot and we were unlucky, but that’s the one goal.

“But the other two goals, just huge mistakes, really bad mistakes. You can’t win Division-I college games giving up one bad mistake, much less two.”

The Gauchos gave themselves a mountain to climb when a giveaway at the back turned into a goal for the Beavers in the fourth minute, the visitors needing to make just one pass to set up the score.
 
To its credit, Santa Barbara fought back in the immediate aftermath of the goal and were the dominant team for much of the first half. In the ninth minute, Sessoms danced through Oregon State defenders and forced a save from a tight angle. From the resulting corner, Brown smashed home what appeared to be his first career goal from long range.

However, the Beavers challenged the ruling and the referee determined that a Gaucho standing by an Oregon State player was both in an offside position and interfering with the play, despite the fact that neither the Gaucho nor the Beaver involved appeared to touch the ball. That conclusion was enough to overturn the goal.
 
There was no overturning what came in the 25^th minute, as Sessoms and Brown combined on an incisive one-two passing sequence that sent Brown through on goal. The Santa Barbara left back once again made good on his chance, blasting a shot into the roof of the net at his near post.

It was a moment of catharsis for the junior, who has been as excellent as ever after missing all of 2025 with an injury but had still sought his first career goal entering Sunday’s action.
 
However, the happy mood did not last, as another giveaway at the back resulted in another Beavers goal in the 32^nd minute, and the visitors took a 2-1 lead into halftime.

That lead became 3-1 in the 54^th minute, when an Oregon State player won the ball back some 30 yards from goal, took a few touches into space and struck a shot basically perfectly into the top corner, a location no goalkeeper in the world could reach.
 
That third goal effectively settled the match, though there were moments that brought the nearly 4,000-person Welcome Weekend crowd to its feet as Santa Barbara attempted to rally. 

Steinar Bjornsson pulled off a bicycle kick in the 64^th minute, drawing both a save and a roar, and Jakob Methvin forced another good save at the near post in the 76^th minute.

Sessoms got a decent look in the 82^nd minute, but his shot ended up being somewhat routine.

The Gauchos have five days to reset and dial in their approach, as the next fixture on their calendar is the first leg of the Blue-Green Rivalry, a Sept. 25 visit to Cal Poly.

“At this point, it’s not a matter of doing something different, it’s just eliminating mistakes that lead to I mean, that was just, it was an easy goal, both of them,” Vom Steeg said. “You know, we have to expect our players to do better than that, because that’s the game.”