SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – No. 14 UC Santa Barbara cruised to a 9-5 victory Monday afternoon over BYU baseball.

Gaucho junior lefty Andrew Vasquez, a towering 6-foot-6 former freshman All-American pitcher, baffled the Cougars, striking out five in six innings. Vasquez got the win and UCSB improved to 23-8.

The Cougars rallied for three runs in the ninth inning off a bases-loaded triple by Eric Urry down the right-field line. Dillon Robinson singled in Urry to narrow the margin to 9-5.

The next best news of the day for BYU was that its junior pitcher Jeff Barker was named West Coast Conference pitcher of the week for leading the team to a 1-0 upset last week over No. 24 Pepperdine. But neither the Cougar pitching corps nor their batters could slow UCSB much in this non-conference loss.

“They are really athletic,” BYU coach Mike Littlewood said. “They don’t strike out a whole lot. They look to run and are really aggressive. We are a tired team right now, but we fought back. You can’t wait until the ninth inning. We need to do a better job of putting on pressure.”

BYU managed singles in the second, fifth and sixth innings by CJ Latham, Dillon Robinson and Bret Lopez, respectively. Then Lopez scored off Bronson Larsen’s two-out double off the wall to break the drought, trailing 9-1.

“They can run one through nine,” Lopez said of the Gauchos. “They kept putting up runs and it was a hard to get out of the hole.”

Among the frustrated Cougars was senior co-captain Brock Whitney who saw his 13-game hitting streak end.

The Cougars, now 14-24 overall and 5-10 in league action, ready to host Loyola Marymount in a return to West Coast Conference play on Thursday at 6 p.m., starting a three-game series with the Lions.

Games at No. 24 Pepperdine and No. 14 UC Santa Barbara highlight the next week of baseball for BYU, but first the Cougars play at Washington State on Tuesday.

The WSU Cougars (15-13, 6-3 in the Pac-12) have also been nationally ranked this season, but are not currently in the top 25.  BYU (12-21, 4-8 in West Coast Conference) plays that Tuesday night contest away from the WSU campus in a special game at Pasco, Wash., at 6:30 PDT.

Desmond Poulson (4-3, 4.10) is scheduled to start in a pre-designated rotation on the mound against Washington State and will start again on Saturday at first place Pepperdine (24-7, 10-2 WCC).  Jeff Barker (2-5, 5.65) will start the first game of the Pepperdine series on Thursday at 3 p.m. PDT.  Kolton Mahoney (4-4, 4.10) will start on Friday for the Cougars. Both Thursday and Friday's games are at 3 pm., while Saturday's game is at 1 p.m. PDT.  BYU’s starter at UC Santa Barbara is TBA for Monday afternoon.

“If we play to our potential for nine innings we can compete with anyone,” BYU coach Mike Littlewood said. “We need to avoid big innings on defense, throw strikes, play catch and have timely hitting.”

Currently the team’s leaders in hitting streaks are Brock Whitney at nine games, Dillon Robinson at eight games and Brennon Lund at seven games.

The BYU-WSU game will only be available on livestats, while the games in California will be broadcast live by KOVO Radio 960 AM and through its audio stream on the Internet along with BYU Radio/Sirius XM 143.

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