This past weekend validated the Pacific men’s water polo team as a legitimate contender for the NCAA national championship.
On Saturday, the No. 4 Cal men’s water polo team (8-3, 0-1 MPSF) went head to head against the No. 3 Tigers in a 10:30 a.m. tilt at Spieker Aquatic Complex. After two quarters of back-and-forth scoring, Cal junior Aleksa Saponjic swiped a shot into the right corner of the cage to increase the Bears’ lead to a margin of two, 6-4.
But that was the last time any Bear would score.
The Tigers notched three points in the second half while holding the Cal squad goalless for 14 straight minutes. Pacific (10-1, 2-0 in the MPSF) eventually topped the Bears by a single point, 7-6, for its fourth-straight victory this season.
“We missed a lot of opportunities — we had a lot of good looks on the cage — but their goalie played really well, and we didn’t make them work as hard as we wanted to,” said Cal coach Kirk Everist. “He made some great saves that didn’t allow us to get one goal here, one goal there, and in a one-goal game, those make a big difference.
In the first period, Pacific senior Goran Tomasevic tallied the Tigers’ first point of the game, which would go unanswered by the Bears for the entire first quarter. Cal had several opportunities but was unable to score goals due to the strength of Pacific’s defense, especially in senior goalie Alex Malkis. He would eventually post 15 saves in the game.
“We had really solid looks on the cage and the right guys with their hands on the ball that we wanted to have their hands on the ball, but we just weren’t able to convert really any of them,” Everist said.
Tomasevic scored the Tigers’ second goal to start off the second quarter, but the Bears answered with a swift backhand shot by junior Luka Ivanovic, assisted by sophomore attacker Mitchell Hamilton. Ivanovic’s goal initiated Cal’s second-period comeback, with sophomore Colin Mulcahy notching another goal for the Bears 30 seconds later during an offensive counterattack to tie the game at 2-2.
Senior Hunter Gettelfinger also contributed a goal during the second quarter, and Saponjic rounded out Cal’s first-half production with an impressive lobbed shot into the net.
However, after Saponjic’s goal at the start of the third period, the Tigers managed to stage their own comeback. Pacific’s Balazs Erdelyi — the 2012 collegiate water polo player of the year — knotted the game at 6-6 heading into the fourth quarter.
Malkis later blocked seven of Cal’s shots in the fourth period, shutting down the Bears’ offense, while Tomasevic garnered Pacific’s final goal with a two-meter shot. In the last few minutes of the game, the Tigers stalled during every ball possession they had to run down the shot clock until the end of the match.
“They were a little out of gas, and they definitely didn’t want to come down and set up an offense, have a turnover and have us counter out,” Everist said. “They were taking away our counterattack game and forcing us to score in the front court.”
Despite the close loss, Everist felt the final score met his expectations for the result of the matchup between two of the top teams in the nation.
“We had some opportunities to sneak ahead of them in a few goals, but they made good individual plays,” Everist said. “We knew it was going to be a one-goal game, a tough one for both teams — and it turned out to be just that.”
Janice Chua covers men’s water polo. Contact her at [email protected].