Things were going as planned for the Cal men’s water polo team on Saturday. Then, the weekend took a turn for the worse on Sunday.
The No. 3 Bears beat No. 16 Air Force Saturday morning at the Stanford-hosted NorCal Invitational and dropped No. 16 UC Irvine later that evening to open the two-day tournament and move to 7-0 on the season.
However, the Bears could not continue their success on Sunday, when they lost a morning semifinal to No. 2 UCLA, 11-10, in overtime. Later that day, the team was unable to overcome an early deficit against Stanford in the third-place game and eventually fell, 9-8.
The Bears started the tournament strong, thrashing Air Force, 19-2, in a 10:50 a.m. tilt. Colin Mulcahy, Aleksa Saponjic and Collin Smith led the Bears in scoring, notching 3 goals apiece. Goalie Michael Boggan had ten saves in place of usual starter Justin Parsons.
In a 6:15 p.m. matchup later that day, Cal did not let up on its offensive march. The team dominated UC Irvine in a 14-7 rout. Six different Cal players had a pair of goals in the game, including senior captain Marin Balarin. Boggan added nine saves in the game.
The two Saturday wins put the Bears exactly where they hoped to be — in the Sunday morning semifinal slot against UCLA. The last time the two squads faced off, the Bruins ended Cal’s national title hopes a year ago with an overtime loss at the MPSF conference semifinal.
The Bruins took a 4-3 lead into the second quarter, but the Bears bounced back to lead, 7-5, through the next three quarters.
However, a defensive decline in the fourth quarter allowed UCLA back into the game with five goals in the last eight minutes to tie the game, 10-10, at the final buzzer.
Yet the Bruins scored in the first of two overtime periods, and the Bears could not overcome the deficit, falling 11-10.
Possibly suffering from fatigue after the UCLA game, the Bears got off to a rough start against Stanford in the third place game. The Bears notched a goal before the end of the first quarter but faced a sizable 5-1 gap after the first break.
Cal went on a scoring spree over the next three quarters and held the Cardinal goalless in the third quarter. The Bears tied the game at 8-8 in the fourth quarter, before Stanford got a late goal to win, 9-8.
The Bears had hoped to come out of the NorCal Invite with no more than one loss on the season. But after losing five players to indefinite suspension earlier in the week, the near-comeback against Stanford had signs of promise for Cal.
“We came out with two losses,” Balarin said. “There’s disappointment with that. The feeling that we’re never going to give up and that we’re not going to let certain things hold us back was there. We’re going to keep fighting and I think we really found that out this weekend.”
Warren Laufer covers men’s water polo. Contact him at Click here to read the full comment policy.