Cruising The Decks: UCLA's Win Over USC Surprising
It's not that the Bruins won, but how they won
Oct. 30, 2007
By Trevor Freeman
Special to CSTV.com
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Trevor Freeman
Trevor Freeman covers Water Polo for CSTV.com. |
Before getting started, the Cruise wants to send out its best wishes for recovery to everybody affected by the
There were some big results this week as UCSB knocked off Stanford for the first time in 20 years and UCLA beat up top ranked USC. However we begin this week's article with a special treat as one of the winningest coaches in water polo stopped by the Cruise for a chat. This week's voyage starts with a perennial Top 20 program at a small
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Eleven Shots Out Of Set
11. This week I had the privilege of speaking with legendary
What do you think has been the key in keeping
We have worked hard to try to maintain our play at a consistently high level. I would say that there are three main factors that have enabled us to stay consistent over the last several years.
First, we have a very supportive athletic department and administration. Although academics are the top priority here at the
Second, we try to recruit for depth and speed. In order to try to play well from year to year, it is important to create enough depth so you don't lose all your key players in one year. We try to create a situation where we can go 12 or more players deep even in a close game. The depth helps in the current season by allowing us to play at a faster tempo, and it helps us in the next season because we always have experienced players returning. Also, because SCIAC rules don't allow us to start practice as early as other teams, we need to recruit good swimmers who can get into shape fast.
Finally, we try to seek out the best competition we can find. Our goal each season is to be at our best by the time we get to the SCIAC season and the WWPA Tournament. The best way to do that is to challenge yourself against the best.
Tell me a little bit about your first-team All-American from last season, Ryan Hall. How easy does it make the game for the rest of the team when you have a 2-meter like him?
Ryan Hall has done a great job for us for four years. The best thing about him is that he is a team player. He works very hard in practice and is willing to adapt his role to whatever the team needs. His freshman year we were thin at 2-meter defense so he did that. The next year we needed more 2-meter offense so he did that. He has the ability to play wherever we need him and be successful. He has been a pleasure to coach, and will certainly go down in U of R history as one of the best we have ever had.
What are your goals for the rest of the season? From my angle, you guys look to be the presumptive favorites in the SCIAC and a real sleeper in the WWPA Tournament.
Our first and foremost goal every season is to win the SCIAC Championship. The SCIAC schools are our peers and we compete against them in every sport. Because we are defending SCIAC champions, I am sure many people look at us as the favorite. However, this is and will continue to be a very competitive year. We won a close game against Pomona-Pitzer the other day that could have easily gone the other way. I also see Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Cal Lutheran as teams that are clearly on an upward trend and will challenge for the SCIAC title. We should have a very exciting SCIAC tourney in a few weeks.
As for the WWPA, we played very well in the WWPA Tourney in 2004 (2nd) and 2005 (3rd), but played poorly last year. This year we hope to move back up. UC Davis and Loyola Marymount would have to be the favorites, but we will be there to compete. The tournament is at Air Force this year, so I am hoping that our depth will help us at altitude.
Which players outside of Ryan Hall should we be keeping our eye on? Is there anybody ready to break out?
In addition to Ryan Hall's consistent, all-around excellence, we have gotten fine play from a bunch of players this year. We play 12-14 field players in most games so our stats tend to be more spread out than some other teams. Offensively, Andrew Becskehazy and Brendan Meaney are pushing Hall for the scoring lead. Tony Rona and Erik Grosshans are the guys who seem to handle the ball the most and are earning the most assists. Ryan Floersch and Clint Stevenson are really having an impact on the offensive counter. Jim Kehrig, Jon Rielly, and goalie Teddy Trowbridge anchor the defense. Maybe a guy to watch is Buddy Olds. He is an excellent all-around player, but has been battling a couple injuries. If we can keep him healthy he will really help us out.
Over 300 wins, six SCIAC championships and some great showings in the WWPA Tournament. Which wins stand out the most in your mind?
I guess if I had to single out a few of our most memorable games, there are some that standout.
In 1993, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps came into our SCIAC dual game with an 111-game winning streak in SCIAC competition (over 11 years without a conference loss). CMS is my alma mater and was coached by my mentor Mike Sutton. We played them at home in our old indoor shallow-deep pool and won the game to end their winning streak, and then went on to win our first SCIAC title.
In 2004, we went into the WWPA Tourney as the No. 5 seed and upset No. 4 BYU-Hawaii in the first round. We then faced No. 1 UCSD in the semifinal, and managed to pull off another upset. Unfortunately, we lost to LMU in the final, but that was one of my most enjoyable and memorable weekends. We had just lost in the SCIAC Championship game the week before, so for our guys to rally and get it back together a week later was a great accomplishment.
Later that school year in the spring of 2005, the NCAA hosted the first women's championship with an 8-team field. With the increased field size, the SCIAC received an automatic bid. I had a small roster that season, but they were tough, hard-working, and fun-loving. We won the SCIAC title that year, after being down by three goals early in the championship game. I have always felt that the SCIAC helped pave the way for NCAA Women's Water Polo. It is an underappreciated fact that five SCIAC schools moved to varsity status in 1994, and we were the first conference to recognize a conference championship in women's water polo. I was proud to have my team and our University be the first to represent the SCIAC at the NCAA Championships.
Now back to the shots......
10. Hold on, I just need to take a step up onto my soapbox. I haven't seen a team get jobbed by pollsters as egregiously as UC Davis got jobbed in this week's Top 25 in an awfully long time. The Aggies were ranked eighth in the country directly behind
Take a step back and think about what I just wrote logically. Now, I know the argument on the other side will be that
UC Davis only had one game this week and it was an easy one as they beat up UC Santa Cruz, 18-5. Ten different Aggies recorded goals in the win.
9. The Brown vs. Harvard game is Exhibit G in the closeness of the competition in CWPA's Northern Division. It took triple overtime to determine the winner of this rivalry game. Freshman Corey Schwartz supplied the game-winner for the Brown Bears who clinched the second seed at CWPA's Northern Division Championships. Brown closed out their regular season with a 10-7 win over a frisky Mercyhurst on Friday night.
8. Congratulations to the Engineers of MIT and the Lakers of Mercyhurst. MIT won the Division III Eastern Championships over the weekend and Mercyhurst won the Division II Eastern Championships. Both are programs that play organized, efficient water polo and are able to beat more talented teams because of it. Following their victories, MIT beat Mercyhurst 12-10 to claim CWPA's "
7. Nobody needed a big win more than Pacific did and they got it Sunday. Eight second half goals propelled the Tigers to an 11-10 win over
On the other side of the coin,
6. St. Francis and Fordham staged an entertaining battle Tuesday night. The Terriers were up 10-6 entering the fourth quarter and watched Alex Powell of Fordham score three straight goals to narrow the gap to 10-9 with four minutes left in the game. St. Francis would get it together and score five straight to win the game 15-9. In a weird way, it was almost good for St. Francis that they got a scare like that before postseason play. If you are going to come close to laying an egg, do it in a game that doesn't mean as much. On the flip side, Fordham has to be feeling a little more confident in themselves after having given St. Francis such a tough time. The Rams are a weird team and that is due to them playing a lot of youngsters. Fordham seems to play better against better teams as they also played
5. Tough weekend for Pepperdine as they dropped both games up north vs. Cal and Stanford. The Waves hung around in both contests but were never able to take control. This leaves Pepperdine at 1-3 in the Mountain Pacific and turns the game against
4. Nice weekend for Santa Clara. The Broncos knocked off Loyola Marymount in overtime 8-7. This win really gives them some solid momentum heading into the rest of the season and more importantly into the WWPA Tournament in which they will be a nice dark horse pick. The Broncos have done a complete 180 from the team I saw at the beginning of the year at
3. Just when you thought
2. In what has to be the biggest victory of his tenure, Wolf Wigo was able to turn back his alma mater and two younger brothers on Saturday afternoon. At the beginning of the season, I crowned UCSB as my national sleeper and in the win over Stanford they showed why. Five players scored in the win over Stanford with sophomore Zsombor Vincze leading the way with three goals. Freshman Milos Golic and senior Ross Sinclair each chipped in two. It is worth noting that while UCSB is 17-9 on the season, six of those losses are by one goal and another was by two goals.
1. The final score was one that I never expected to hear. UCLA 9, USC 5. When a friend of mine called me up to tell me the score, my jaw literally dropped. Now, I did think UCLA could win the game, however, not like that. I thought if the Bruins won that they would win by 1-2 goals and if the margin of victory was three or more goals, it meant that USC undressed the Bruins. Not only did UCLA beat the Trojans, but they did it with the precision of an assassin. They never trailed in the contest and dominated the second half. My buddy told me on the phone that he hoped Chay Lapin had a family member videotaping his performance in the game, because he deserves the privilege of one day breaking it out to his future children to show them how great a goalkeeper he was.
Player to Watch
Rick Wright and Zsombor Vincze UCSB: Both players were tremendous in leading the Gauchos to their first win over Stanford in twenty years. Vincze was the catalyst on offense and Wright was solid in the cage as he posted ten saves in the win.
Contest To Keep An Eye On
CWPA's Northern Division Championships are this weekend and the only thing that can be announced with any authority is that St. Francis and Brown should win their first round games and qualify for Easterns. The other two games are going to be very tight matchups. Harvard is playing Fordham and with the game being in
My bold prediction for the weekend is St. Francis winning Northerns in a tight game over Brown. I have Harvard finishing third and
The Projected Final Four
1. USC (MPSF Representative)
2.
3. UC Davis (WWPA Representative)
4. Navy (CWPA/Eastern Representative)
E-Mail of The Week
This week's e-mail came from Robert F. and I thought it was an interesting question. It asked, "I have been reading your columns and I think it is great that somebody is finally giving real coverage to water polo. I was just wondering, who would be your All-American team as of right now."
This question took me about five hours to answer, as there are a lot of players who are worthy of being named a first-team All-American. I'll take a shot and list these seven guys as who I would pick as All-Americans right now. This is definitely subject to change with all the conferences hosting their respective tournaments over the next month. There are a few guys not on this list that I could easily see earning a spot in our scintillating seven.
Goalie: Adam Shilling, USC
This was the tightest race as you can make an outstanding case for
Field Players: Tim Hutten, UC Irvine, Adam Hewko, Pepperdine, Mike Mulvey, Navy, Nick Arrigo, UC Davis, Michael Sharf, Cal, Shea Buckner, USC.
I know I will get some criticism over Tim Hutten's inclusion since he missed five games with injury. Quite frankly, I know this and I will still defend putting him on as I think Hutten is the most dominant 2-meter in the country. No player on any team has the impact he has when he plays. Hewko, Mulvey, Arrigo, Sharf and Buckner have all been outstanding this year and spearhead the offenses of five tremendous teams.
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