SAN FRANCISCO – UCSB Starter Austin Pettibone followed up his four-hit shutout last week by tossing five-hit shutout against the USF Dons to lead the Gauchos to a 6-0 victory Saturday afternoon at Benedetti Diamond.
With the shutout, Pettibone now has four complete games in his collegiate career. Pettibone improved his record for this season to 4-1 with his second consecutive dominant outing, this time striking out 10 batters. Pettibone now has 22 wins in his UCSB career, tied for the third-most in program history with Jeff Chancer.
Pettibone’s domination resulted in no instances where there were multiple runners on base and only one USF runner was able to reach second base. The Gauchos’ defense would aid Pettibone by turning two double plays, along with catcher Campbell Wear throwing out Bradley Zimmer attempting to steal second in the seventh.
UC Santa Barbara improved to 31-16 and have now taken the first two games of the series versus the Dons. Cal State Northridge dropped to 24-28 with the loss.
UCSB was running all over USF starter Christian Cecilio, nabbing four stolen bases as a team. In the first inning, both Joey Epperson and Robby Nesovic successfuly stole second to get in scoring position and would score on back-to-back RBI singles from Nesovic and Tyler Kuresa to take a 2-0 lead.
After Scott Quinlan singled with one out in the fourth, he would continue to run the bases, stealing second and third base during Woody Woodward’s at-bat. Woodward would then successfully knock in Quinlan with an RBI groundout. The Gauchos would tack on one run in the sixth and two more runs in the eighth to extend their lead to the eventual final score of 6-0.
Nesovic led the way offensively for UCSB with a 3 for 5 performance along with his RBI single in the first inning. Kuresa and Devon Gradford followed suit by each going 2 for 4 with one RBI.
Cecilio started on the mound for the Dons, allowing six runs, five earned, in 7.1 innings along with eight strikeouts. He took the loss to drop his record to 5-8.
UC Santa Barbar and USF face off tomorrow afternoon as the Gauchos go for the sweep. Greg Mahle will be making his first start of the year on the mound for UCSB. First pitch begins at 1:00 p.m.
