Kyle Wade pitched 6.1 innings of one-run ball on Saturday and John Jensen continued his hot streak at the plate, leading SBCC to a 7-1 baseball win over Oxnard at Pershing Park.
Wade (3-1) allowed just one run on five hits with six strikeouts and three walks in his longest outing of the year. Jensen, a freshman from Santa Barbara High, belted a two-run homer in the first and a leadoff triple in the sixth. He went 2-4 on the day with two RBIs and two runs, raising his average to .324. Jensen is batting .405 in his last 10 games.
The Vaqueros, ranked No. 23 in the state, remained perfect at home (9-0). SBCC has outscored its opponents 57-33 at "The Persh" with a .279 team batting average. The Vaqueros are 4-9 on the road with a .230 average.
Santa Barbara won for the ninth time in 11 games, improving to 13-9 and staying in a first-place tie atop the WSC North with Cuesta at 4-2. Oxnard fell to 12-11-1 and 2-4.
Wade, a 6-2 sophomore right-hander from Chino Hills, retired nine of the first 11 batters.
"Today was the best that I've felt this year," said Wade. "Going into the game, everyone was lifting me up and telling me what to do. It was good to see our offense swinging the bats so well. That homer by Jensen put them down in the dirt early on.
"I only threw a handful of off-speed pitches. Coach said we could attack these guys with fastballs and that's what we did. Lately, I've been focusing on getting through the first inning. After that, everything falls into place."
There's no place like home for Wade and Jensen. Wade is 2-0 at Pershing Park with a 2.08 ERA. Jensen is batting .400 at home (12-30) with a .700 slugging percentage.
Nicholas Allman had two hits, including a double in the fourth and came around to score on a wild pitch and a throwing error. Jensen led off the sixth with a triple down the right-field line and scored when the third baseman fielded Blake Ogburn's two-out bunt and threw it past first to give the Vaqueros a 4-0 lead.
Wade didn't allow a runner to third base until the seventh when he walked Jorden Castro and Esteban Santa Cruz-Ruiz singled to right to put runners at first and third with no outs. Wade struck out Lawson Faria, then Jake Keily came on in relief. He gave up a sacrifice fly to Brett Workman and then got the next five outs with two strikeouts.
Joseph Hamilton and Jake Holton also had two hits for the Vaqueros, who collected 10 hits and didn't commit an error.
SBCC got three more runs in the eighth on a single by Hamilton, an RBI double by Aaron Portee, an RBI single by Holton and a dropped pickoff throw that brought in Holton.
"That was Kyle's best outing of the season," said sixth-year coach Jeff Walker. "He's gotten better and better each time he's touched the mound. That's the perfect way to start, he had a shutdown inning in the first and then we get a hit and the homer from Jensen that went across the street into a hotel. That hit not only gave us the lead, it changed what they were going to do on the mound.
"Keily did his job, throwing 1.2 scoreless innings and Steven Elliott finished up."
The Vaqueros will host Moorpark on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m.
