Trying to follow up on its impressive victory over USC last weekend at Avery Aquatic Center, the No. 4 Stanford men’s water polo team (8-5, 2-1 MPSF) found mixed success on its trip to southern California last weekend. The trip featured two games—a Friday night affair at No. 3 UCLA and a Sunday afternoon game against No. 6 UC-Santa Barbara. Stanford fell to UCLA, but managed to pull out a win over the Gauchos.
The UCLA match, the second meeting this season between the Cardinal and the Bruins, was a back-and-forth contest—neither team could pull away. The game, which the Bruins ended up winning 9-8, was tied six different times, and save for two brief instances, the two squads were never more than a goal apart.
The critical stretch of the game occurred, fittingly for such a tight contest, in the final three minutes. With 2:56 left in the final quarter, Stanford senior driver Jeffrey Schwimer netted a clutch goal that gave the Cardinal an 8-7 lead.
Though it was coming off a string of strong performances, the Cardinal defense could not back up this slim margin, allowing two hard-fought goals by the Bruins in the final minutes, with the game-clincher taking place with a mere 50 seconds left on the clock.
Sunday saw the Stanford squad swiftly skip up the coast to do battle with UC-Santa Barbara. This game featured less drama than Friday’s contest, but it was still a close one, with the Cardinal winning 8-6.
Stanford took advantage of a high number of Gaucho penalties, converting on several key mismatch situations—three goals came courtesy of penalty shots with an additional two occurring via an imbalanced six-on-five situation. Discipline and execution were the difference in this game, but the Cardinal was able to exact revenge on the UCSB squad that had handed them a defeat on Sept. 18 in the NorCal Invitational.
With this win over UCSB, the Cardinal was able to remain in third place in the highly competitive Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) standings, behind California and UC-Irvine, who each boast perfect 2-0 conference records.
For the weekend, Stanford tallied 16 goals scored by: team captain and senior driver Sage Wright (four); junior driver Jacob Smith (four); Schwimer (three); senior driver Paul Rudolph (two); senior driver Travis Noll (one); junior utility Peter Sefton (one) and redshirt freshman driver Ian Gamble (one). Redshirt junior goalie Brian Pingree recorded 15 saves, playing as the reigning MPSF player of the week.
Next up for the Cardinal is the alumni game, to be played on Saturday at Avery Aquatic Center in honor of Homecoming Weekend. After that, the team travels down to Malibu for a contest versus Pepperdine on Sunday.