The Cal men’s water polo team was without head coach Kirk Everist this weekend, but that did not slow the Bears in their East Coast domination at the Princeton Invitational in Princeton, N.J.
Everist stayed home from the invite for personal reasons, so assistant coach Boyd Lachance led the Bears in their first five games of the 2012 season. In those five games, the Bears could not be stopped on offense, outscoring their opponents 82-21.
In their opening game, the No. 3 Bears dropped No. 20 St. Francis 16-3 on and followed with a 16-4 crushing win against No. 13 Princeton Friday night.
The Bears continued to blow out their opponents with a 20-3 win over Bucknell on Saturday morning before beating Harvard Saturday evening, 13-7, in their closest game of the invite. The Bears wrapped up their opening weekend with a 17-4 win over MIT on Sunday morning.
The offensive highlights for the team came from huge performances from junior Collin Smith. The attacker scored 19 goals in the five games, including four goals against both St. Francis and Princeton and six goals against MIT.
“Collin is a guy that has been waiting to break out of his shell for a while,” senior captain Marin Balarin said. “He finally got an opportunity to show off his strengths and we were able to work with him.”
Balarin himself also contributed to the Bears’ explosive offense. The center scored 14 total goals and his four goals against Bucknell were a team high.
Balarin was quick to give credit to his teammates for making good passes inside when he was able to gain position. His team-centered approach was exactly what Lachance was looking for out of his captain.
“We’re looking for consistent leadership out of Marin,” Lachance said. “With Coach Everist out, I challenged him to be a leader by his performance and his actions.”
On the other end of the pool, senior goalie Justin Parsons led the Bears on defense with 30 saves through 11 quarters of play. The Cal defense kept its opponents struggling to score throughout the tournament, despite a few mistakes against Harvard.
“We had a poor game against Harvard but we came together and bounced back against MIT,” Balarin added.
The bounce-back game against MIT was exactly what the Bears needed to finish polishing up the fine details before the NorCal Tournament at Stanford next weekend.
“We got to go through 20 different rotations and work on plenty of things,” Balarin said. “We got to work on all our plans and get ready for next weekend when we face tougher teams.”
Despite winning by six goals, the determined Bears were disappointed with themselves for allowing Harvard to score seven goals. But Cal came back to finish out the weekend on one last dominating run.
“We have to treat every opponent the same way,” Lachance said. “I think the guys are excited about playing against some tougher teams.”
Warren Laufer covers men’s water polo. Contact him at [email protected].
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