Something special is brewing at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium this season.

Tyler Bremner delivered an electric performance on the mound and the UC Santa Barbara baseball team completed a three-game sweep of UC San Diego with a 12-3 victory on Sunday afternoon.

“When our starting pitchers are on their game it feels like we have three Friday guys on the weekend,” said UC Santa Barbara coach Andrew Checketts of his stellar starting pitching duo of Ryan Gallagher, Mike Gutierrez and Bremner. “Bremner could certainly start on Friday at a lot of places.”

With the win, the Gauchos improved to 20-0 at home so far this season with their fourth consecutive weekend sweep in Big West Conference play. UC Santa Barbara now has a two game lead over UC Irvine in the Big West standings. 

“I haven’t really talked about that much, in terms of scoreboard watching,” Checketts said. “I just tell them all of the cliche stuff, play good baseball and control what you can control.”

Despite the lopsided win for UC Santa Barbara, the visiting Tritons got on the board first in the top of the first inning. Emiliano Gonzalez drove in Nick Costello with a ground out to give UC San Diego a 1-0 lead.

However, after the first two batters of the game reached base Bremner went on to retire the next 19 batters he faced.

“(Bremner) had a good heater going, especially that second time through the order, he dialed it up a notch,” Checketts said. “I used to always say that about (Shane) Bieber, he could smell a win, he could smell it and go for it. Some guys get defensive and try not to screw it up, but once we got the lead he could smell the win and he put his foot on the gas.”

The UC Santa Barbara offense broke the game open with four runs in the bottom of the second inning. Ivan Brethowr accounted for the majority of the damage with a three-run homer over the netting in left field. 

The Gauchos tacked on one run in the fourth inning and five more in the sixth inning, including a single into center field by Nick Oakley, that scored Brendan Durfee and Brethowr increasing the UC Santa Barbara lead to 7-1.

Overall Bremner pitched seven innings allowing two runs on two hits with eight strikeouts. Reed Moring followed that up with two innings on the mound in relief. He surrendered one run on three hits.

Freshman shortstop Jonathan Menedez closed the scoring for UC Santa Barbara with a two-run homer over the right field fence. The Gauchos pounded out 13 hits and finished with eight walks. 

The Gauchos {31-12 overall, 17-4 Big West} will host Pepperdine in a non-conference contest on Tuesday beginning at 4:35 p.m. with their undefeated record at home still intact.

PHOENIX (AP) — Ketel Marte and Joc Pederson homered to back Ryne Nelson’s return to the mound and the Arizona Diamondbacks snapped a three-game losing streak Sunday, defeating the San Diego Padres 11-4.

The Diamondbacks roughed up Padres starter Matt Waldron (1-4), who gave up eight runs (seven earned) and eight hits in three innings.

Marte’s two-run homer and Corbin Carroll’s two-run single came in a four-run first inning.

San Diego, which had its four-game winning streak end, came back with three in the second on Jackson Merrill’s two-run homer and Kyle Higashioka’s RBI double against Nelson (2-2), who was activated from the injured list to make the start.

But Arizona answered with two more runs in its half of the inning on RBI hits from Jake McCarthy and Christian Walker.

Pederson’s homer, a two-run shot to right, came off Jhonny Brito, who relieved Waldron in the fourth when Arizona had another four-run inning.

McCarthy had three hits to lead the Diamondbacks, who finished with 13 hits. Arizona went 2-4 on its homestand.

Nelson lasted five innings, throwing 99 pitches. He allowed eight hits and four runs, walking one and striking out three. He last pitched April 18 at San Francisco, when the right-hander took a line drive off his pitching elbow.

To make room for Nelson, Arizona optioned left-hander Brandon Hughes to Triple-A Reno.

PADRES ADD INFIELDER

A day after acquiring Luis Arraez from Miami, San Diego called up Donovan Solano from Triple-A El Paso. The 36-year-old hit .318 in 12 games with El Paso after being signed to a minor-league deal last month.

The Padres are Solano’s sixth big-league team. He hit .282 in 134 games for Minnesota last season. San Diego optioned Eguy Rosario to El Paso in a corresponding move.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said before the game that closer Paul Sewald (left oblique strain) will be going with the team on its upcoming road trip and could pitch as soon as Tuesday. Alek Thomas (strained left hamstring), sidelined since the first week of the season, also could return this week. Thomas is on a rehab assignment at Reno this weekend. … Lourdes Gurriel Jr. had a scheduled day off.

UP NEXT

Padres: RHP Yu Darvish (1-1, 3.45) starts Monday against the Cubs in Chicago.

Diamondbacks: Off Monday. Open a three-game series Tuesday in Cincinnati. Zac Gallen (3-2, 3.38) returns to the mound for the first time since April 26, when he left a start against Seattle with a strained right hamstring.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

With UC San Diego’s campus population already exceeding projections made for a decade from now and further big increases expected, the university is updating its long-range development plan with an objective of creating more housing for students on the west end of the La Jolla campus.

The current plan, completed in 2018, was projected to take the campus through 2035. The revised plan would go through 2040.

The 2018 plan estimated the 2035 campus population at 65,600, including 42,400 students and 23,200 employees. The revised estimate, based on enrollment and staffing trends, projects a total of 96,300 students and employees by 2040.

However, UCSD’s student enrollment already has reached 43,381 as of last fall, according to a campus profile on the university website, with roughly 40,000 employees, according to the University of California.

UCSD attributes the higher-than-projected growth to “demand for higher education and systemwide priorities to increase enrollment.”

A key driver for the plan update is “expanding access to students seeking a high-quality education” in accord with priorities set by the state, the UC system and UC San Diego over the past decade, according to UCSD spokeswoman Leslie Sepuka.

“It requires ongoing investments in infrastructure, classroom space as well as faculty and staff to enhance the student experience,” she said.

In March, a scoping meeting was held to go over the update and take feedback from residents.

“The university is committed to increasing availability of housing for students,” Sepuka said. “The goal is to provide on-campus housing to up to 65 percent of all students and continue to make progress toward a four-year undergraduate housing guarantee at below market rates for comparable units.”

The campus currently houses a little more than 50 percent of its students with a two-year housing guarantee. Most of the student housing is on the west side, so proposed changes include building additional housing and replacing aging facilities.

The university projects a roughly 30 percent increase in new campus development, including more than 21 million square feet of new buildings on the west campus, a 5 million-square-foot increase from the 2018 plan. The revised plan also lists 567,000 square feet of development “nearby,” meaning not on campus.

No changes are proposed for the associated Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

UCSD says it already has added more than 11,000 new beds for student housing in the past 10 years, which it calls the largest such residential expansion in the country.

According to the university, the UC Board of Regents requires every campus in the UC system to have, and periodically update, a long-range development plan.

The plan “defines how a campus will accommodate anticipated enrollment and the faculty and staff needed to support it. A [long-range development plan] is only a guide; it does not commit the campus to specific projects, as it must provide flexibility for changing conditions.”

Not everyone is convinced the expected changes are good.

Though area resident David Lebowitz said he feels the university “does a tremendous amount of good in terms of its research output and providing so many Californians with a high-quality education … I am also concerned about UC San Diego’s record of failing to complete student housing projects on time, the impact on the student experience of living in an increasingly crowded environment that is a perpetual construction zone, and the impact on traffic from such a dramatic increase in campus population.”

“The growth in staff and faculty is likely more impactful from a traffic standpoint, as nearly all will be commuting,” Lebowitz said. “The traffic impact from student growth is more difficult to predict and could depend in large part on how much on-campus student housing is actually built and what restrictions may be placed on student parking on campus.” ◆