Sept. 3, 2006

By Trevor Freeman
Special to CSTV.com

"We have some unfinished business.  Our guys were two wins away from the national championship. We have every reason to believe we can beat teams like Princeton, Brown and Navy again to make it back to the Final Four and take home the title this year."-St. Francis water polo coach Carl Quigley

If you log onto the St. Francis College athletics website you will find a slogan.  It is "The Small College of Big Dreams."  Never has a phrase been as accurate as it is now when describing the St. Francis water polo team and what they can accomplish this season.  Everybody of significance other than All-American Gergely Fabian and Stephan Mudreac is back from their Final Four squad and is ready to make this season a special one.

One of the big reasons behind this championship hope is the man who keys the St. Francis offensive attack.  Junior Botond Szalma is one of the most gifted offensive players in the country.  The 6'8", 230-pound, Hungarian will set up at both 2-Meter Offense and Driver.  Szalma is coming off a busy summer which included helping the New York Athletic Club garner a third place finish at the 2006 Men's Nationals.  The All-American is constantly double-teamed and his challenge for the upcoming season will be to better handle these situations and get the ball out to the open man. 

St. Francis will be looking to spread out the offensive load this year amongst the wealth of talent they have on their roster.  Senior Bogdan Petrovic returns and hopes to build on his Second-Team All NCAA Tournament selection from last fall. Senior Milos Vuksic is also back and he is capable of lighting up the scoreboard at any time.  Pitching in to help out Szalma at 2-Meter Offense will be Nemanja Pucarevic.  Pucarevic is a sophomore who originally hails from Serbia.  At driver, senior Andrija Vrdoljak returns after spending last season studying abroad.  He is being counted on to provide more outside scoring punch.  Keep an eye on freshman Filip Kisdobranski as well, as he is considered a big-time talent. 

Anchoring the Terrier defense in goal will be All-Conference and All-East selection Dusko Radovanac.  Last season, Radovanac was in the cage for every quarter of every game and practice.  St. Francis will be looking to alleviate some of that burden with the addition of freshman keepers T.J. Clark and Louis Hamwey.  The loss of Gergely Fabian will be felt most prominently at 2-Meter Defense.  St. Francis will count on freshman Pedja Predin to step in and fill this important position.  The Terriers successfully out-recruited a number of West Coast schools to land this 6'4", 210-pound Serbian.

You can't talk St. Francis water polo without talking Carl Quigley.  As somebody who had the pleasure of never being on a team that beat one he coached, I can tell you from personal experience that he is probably the most underrated general in NCAA water polo.  It is one thing to win games when you coach at UCLA or Stanford and you have Olympic sized pools and a built-in recruiting base at your disposal.  It is an entirely different thing to win at a little school in Brooklyn with a 25 yard pool and no "home" recruiting base.  Quigley overcame these drawbacks to build a consistent East Coast power.  While last season may have been their first Final Four, St. Francis had been knocking on the door for a long time.  Carl Quigley was able to do this by getting creative in recruiting and bringing in top international talent.  He is somebody who USA Water Polo should consider bringing onto the Olympic team coaching staff as a Tex Winter-type assistant as he is an expert on the European game.

The Terriers biggest regular season challenge in CWPA's Northern Division will be to avoid complacency.  The only three teams that can provide any competition are Brown, Harvard and Fordham.  However the likelihood of them beating St. Francis is roughly the equivalent of the likelihood that Kirsten Dunst is going to phone her agent after reading this article and request my number.  At Easterns they will see Navy and Princeton, who will provide a sterner test.  However, it would be an outright shock if St. Francis didn't get by them and represent the East in the Final Four.

The anticipation of an East Coast team finally breaking through and getting to the NCAA Championship game has arrived.  Every player who ever played East Coast water polo will be rooting for this small college to accomplish their big dream.