Flora and Vargas lead UCSB past Fullerton at Big West Championships

Irvine, Calif. (KEYT) - There was plenty of juice provided by the Gauchos battery of pitcher Jackson Flora and catcher Nate Vargas.

The Big West Pitcher of the Year Flora allowed just one run in seven innings of work while Vargas homered and drove in three runs as UCSB beat Cal State Fullerton 7-4 at the Big West Championships.

The Gauchos will play Friday at 1 p.m. against the Cal Poly-UC San Diego winner in this double-elimination tournament in Irvine.

UCSB (38-16) did most of their damage at the plate in the first two innings of the game. Vargas doubled in Liam Barrett for the first run of the game. Rowan Kelly knocked in Vargas with a single and William Vasseur also scored on the second error of the first inning by the Fullerton left fielder.

Vargas crushed his team-leading 11th home run in the bottom of the second, a 2-run shot to put UCSB up 6-0.

With the big lead Flora was on cruise control as he limited Fullerton to just 3 hits, one run and he struck out 9 in his 105 pitches. He is now 11-0 on the year and leads the nation with a 1.05 ERA.

"The offense made my job pretty easy today," began Flora. "When you ambush them and get up early like that, for me there's no pressure out there and I just need to attack and get shutdown innings, get zeroes and help the team win."

"Well, I was joking in the dugout that I'm a pretty good coach when (Flora) pitches and a lot of the stuff that I call works when he pitches," smiled UCSB head coach Andrew Checketts said. "That's sarcasm there, but with a player like that going out there, leading us, somebody that wants to win, somebody that's not only talented but cares about the team and gets after it … makes it fun to come to the ballpark every day. That's his 11th win on the season, and he probably threw well enough to win another two or three games where we didn't score."

The Titans made it interesting off of Gauchos freshman reliever Josh Jannicelli who allowed a 3-run home run in the eighth inning to Cameron Kim to make it 7-4.

Fullerton brought the tying-run to the plate in the top of the 9th inning but Jannicelli struck out Nick Miller to nail down the two inning save.