Steinar Bjornsson’s Brace Powers UCSB Men’s Soccer to 2-1 Win Over CSU Fullerton

FULLERTON, Calif. — The UC Santa Barbara Men’s Soccer team converted another halftime lead into victory on Saturday night, with Steinar Bjornsson’s two early goals enough to carry the Gauchos past Cal State Fullerton, 2-1.

The result continues Santa Barbara’s Big West unbeaten streak, now at 13 games, just one shy of matching the program record. The Gauchos could also clinch a spot in the Big West Championship field in their next conference match, with a win at UC Irvine next Saturday enough to cement their place as a semifinal host.

The first 15 minutes of the match looked more like a track meet, with the teams trading forays into each other’s half, but right when it seemed like the Titans were gaining an upper hand, the Gauchos took that hand and broke it.

Kaden Standish had nearly opened the scoring in the 14^th minute when he caught the Fullerton goalkeeper well off his line and shot from the midfield stripe, forcing a scrambling netminder to head the ball off to safety.

Three minutes later, the Gauchos were deeper in the Titan half and took all of five touches to ripple the net.

From a throw-in, Martin Odegaard Oesthagen laid the ball to Jack Middleton at the edge of the penalty area, and Middleton made it points in three straight games by playing a diagonal pass from the far edge of the 18-yard box to the near edge of the six-yard box, where Bjornsson had perfectly timed his run to meet the ball, passing it simply past the goalkeeper.
 
Two minutes after their first goal, the Gauchos nearly got a second when Standish and Bjornsson combined on a give-and-go passing sequence that got Standish the ball in essentially the same spot that he had scored from against Gonzaga on Wednesday, but this time the goalkeeper was able to intervene with an exceptional, sprawling save with his foot.
 
No, Santa Barbara would have to wait all the way until the 24^th minute to get their second score, as they went from defense to attack in an instant. From a Fullerton corner kick, Gaucho goalkeeper Owen Beninga caught the cross into his penalty area, launched a punt forward and watched Standish bring it under control and surge to the top of the Titans’ penalty area.

Surrounded by three defenders, Standish kept hold of the ball and waited for support to arrive in the shape of Bjornsson. With the Icelander on scene, all Standish had to do was pass over to his teammate and watch him blast a low driven shot into the back of the net, despite the Fullerton keeper getting a touch.
 
The Gauchos could smell blood and nearly punished more Titan mistakes. In the 32^nd minute, Kalle Rahbek won the ball back high up the field and noticed the Fullerton keeper again out of his goal, though the Dane was seemingly caught in two minds between shooting or passing to Bjornsson, who was waiting at the top of the box.

In the end, the ball went somewhere in between those two options. In the 38^th minute, Peleg Brown found himself with just the goalkeeper to beat after an odd deflection, but he put his shot wide of the near post from an admittedly awkward angle. By halftime alone, Brown had taken four shots at the Titan goal, as had Bjornsson, while Standish had registered five attempts.
 
And for the first 15 minutes of the second half, it continued to look like Santa Barbara would find a third or potentially even fourth goal. Just six minutes after the break, Rahbek took down a cross well and had the time to look up and find Mateos Carvalho arriving at the back post, but the sophomore was denied by the best save of the night, a reflexive effort to tip Carvalho’s shot over the bar.

Two minutes later, some one-touch passing made the Gaucho midfield look a bit like a pinball machine and generated a wide-open shot for Standish, but his effort slammed harmlessly off the post.

And finally, Bjornsson got the ball and got around the yet-again-out-of-position Titan goalkeeper around midfield but just could not get the ball to get the right side of the post after shooting from nearly the sideline and some 40 yards from goal.
 
The tone of the match changed when the Titans got a goal back with a chipped pass over the back line in the 67^th minute. The Gauchos dug in a bit more, focusing more on denying Fullerton a tying second goal than pursuing a third of their own. And it worked.

In the 23 minutes after scoring, the Titans registered just three more shots, only one of which was on target. There was some breath-holding for all those in Blue and Gold in the 85^th minute, when the match officials spent nine minutes looking for a potential handball in the penalty area after a Fullerton coach’s challenge, but there was no handball to be found.

Instead, the Gauchos wrapped up the evening and brought their three points home to Santa Barbara.

Santa Barbara is where the Gauchos will play their next match, hosting California Baptist in their final Big West-Pac-12 crossover match of the season on Wednesday, Oct. 21 at Harder Stadium.

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. and tickets are on sale now at ucsbgauchos.com/tickets. UC Santa Barbara students get into the match — and all home Gaucho games — for free by scanning a valid UCSB ID.
 
Santa Barbara Men’s Soccer’s next Big West match is on the road at UC Irvine on Saturday, Oct. 21 and could determine which team hosts a Big West Semifinal. With a win, the Gauchos would jump the Anteaters in the conference standings, while a tie would force Santa Barbara to get a result on the final day of the regular season against CSUN.