The No. 6 Texas Longhorns enter the Austin Regional final on Sunday in a position of strength after blowout wins over the Holy Cross Crusaders and the Tarleton State Texans with a matchup against the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos with head coach Andrew Checketts team needing to win its second game on Sunday and again on Monday to advance to the super regional round.
Not only do teams that start a regional 2-0 advance 75 percent of the time, Texas is also in a uniquely-strong position — head coach Jim Schlossnagle will start senior right-hander Ruger Riojas on Sunday, the team’s former No. 1 starter who has only thrown five pitches since his four-inning appearance against Tennessee three weeks ago, and also has every high-leverage arm in his bullpen fully rested.
“Certainly excited to see Ruger pitch, he’s had a really good two weeks of work. Excited to see him get out there,” Schlossnagle said.
Because of the two regional-opening wins were so lopsided in favor of the Longhorns, pitching coach Max Weiner was able to rely on relievers who don’t typically throw on the weekend, ensuring some extra rest for his best relievers — junior left-hander Haiden Leffew, freshman right-hander Brett Crossland, junior right-hander Thomas Burns, freshman right-hander Sam Cozart, and freshman right-hander Brody Walls.
Texas also features a red-hot offense after slugging 11 home runs over two games, including four by freshman left fielder Anthony Pack Jr, who set a school postseason record with three against Holy Cross on Friday after copying the leg kick and bat waggle of star junior right fielder Aiden Robbins.
“All the great players that I’ve coached have a really good combination of confidence and humility — they’re confident, they believe in themselves, they don’t let bad days beat them down, but they also have enough humility to be coached. They’re humble enough — the saying is ‘you can’t learn what you think you already know’ — and if a guy doesn’t have some level of humility where he can be coached, then that confidence is going to go by the wayside, because he’s not going to get better, because they all have to get better. Anthony obviously got stronger and all that stuff, but he also took to the work that Tulo did with him and the changes that he needed to make from an offensive standpoint,” Schlossnagle said on Friday.
The home run barrage also included back-to-back-back shots on Saturday against Tarleton State by Robbins, junior catcher Carson Tinney, and Pack.
After batting .448 against the Crusaders, the Horns hit .316 against the Texans with 33 hits, striking out only twice on Friday and drawing 17 walks on Saturday.
Not everyone is hot in the lineup with junior third baseman Casey Borba going 1-for-11 so far in the regional, but sophomore shortstop Adrian Rodriguez is heating up with five hits, junior first baseman Ashton Larson had three hits on Friday, and redshirt senior center fielder Dariyan Pendergrass has keyed the bottom of the order by going 3-for-8 (.375) with three walks and a stolen base.
The hitters for the Horns will face their biggest challenge of the regional against the Gauchos, who advanced with an 9-5 win over the Texans on Sunday afternoon. Despite having to play three games already, UCSB still hasn’t thrown senior right-hander Kellan Montgomery (8-4, 4.06 ERA), a weekend starter for the Gauchos this season who is allowing opponents to hit just .243 against him.
Santa Barbara also has a deep pitching staff overall that entered the Austin Regional in the top 10 nationally in ERA, hits allowed per nine innings, and WHIP. Seven pitchers have saves for the Gauchos in 2026, including three pitchers with four saves — left-hander Chase Hoover, left-hander Cole Tryba, and right-hander AJ Krodel.
Against Tarleton, Tryba threw 74 pitches over 4.1 innings with Hoover and Krodel notching shorter appearances. Like Texas, UCSB was able to conserve its bullpen on Saturday when star starter Jackson Flora threw 97 pitches over 7.1 innings before Hoover faced one batter in the win over Tarleton on Sunday and Tryba pitched the ninth.
So the full bullpen arsenal for Checketts should be almost entirely if not fully available, putting pressure on the Longhorns to avoid falling behind against Montgomery, which would allow the Gauchos to use their preferred relievers against their preferred matchups late in the game.
Checketts will also hope for similar production from the bottom of his lineup after first baseman Cole Kosciuko and right fielder Noah Karliner hit back-to-back home runs to open up a 4-0 lead in the second inning against Tarleton before center fielder Rowan Kelly blew the game open with three-run home run in the eighth. Kosciuko finished the game 4-for-5 with three runs, smashing his season high of two hits in seven other games.
First pitch on Sunday is at 5 p.m. Central on ESPN+.