Gauchos Roll Past Toreros : Football: Curtius leads UC Santa Barbara to its third victory in a row against USD.

The University of San Diego did everything it could to motivate its football team for Saturday afternoon’s game against UC Santa Barbara.

Everything but a rain dance. Having one of those might have made some sense because the only time USD has beaten the Gauchos in the past four years was after a freak rainstorm in 1987.

Saturday was USD’s homecoming game, which meant the seniors would be playing their final game in Torero Stadium and a crowd of 4,000-plus would be cheering them on. Too, the returning players remember all too well the embarrassing 51-3 rout UCSB inflicted on them last year.

None of it seemed to matter. The sky was unmistakably clear Saturday, and the Toreros were handed a 24-3 loss.

USD (4-2) has not beaten UCSB since a 7-0 victory in the mud in 1987.

“We knew we had to come out hard,” UCSB receiver Brian Fleming said. “We knew they’d be fired up, and we figured we had to take their homecoming crowd out of it, too.”

UCSB (4-2), which for a few years has been preparing for a move next year into NCAA Division II, came out hard and did little wrong all afternoon against the smaller and slower Toreros. The Gauchos had no turnovers, only four penalties for 35 yards, passed for 174 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 131 yards. The three touchdown passes tripled what USD had allowed in its first five games.

Still, USD, which had two costly fumbles in its first two possessions, was in the game until late in the third quarter. That’s when UCSB senior quarterback Mike Curtius hit tight end Adam Leow for his second touchdown reception of the quarter to end the scoring.

Curtius finished 15 of 30 for 174 yards. However, 61 of those yards came in the Gauchos’ opening drive, and Curtius had been averaging 270 yards per game, all against Division II opponents. Three of his completions went to Fleming, a preseason All-American who is now tied for the school career reception record with 93 catches.

Valhalla High and Grossmont College graduate Johnny Ace, another preseason All-American, had two catches, including the first touchdown, a seven-yarder.

“Overall, the defense contained them pretty well, especially since we are a little banged up,” USD Coach Brian Fogarty said. “Some of the things on offense we didn’t too well.”

USD avoided its first shutout since the fourth game of 1984 with a 25-yard field goal by Dave Bergmann. That came with 1:16 left in the first half and pulled USD to within 10-3. But USD managed only one first down in its first three possessions of the second half.

“We put too much pressure on our defense to stop them offensively all the time,” USD quarterback Brendan Murphy said. “They’re just too high-powered for us to do that.”