By the numbers, the Cal men’s water polo team performed as expected this weekend.
At the SoCal Invitational held in Irvine, Calif., the Bears (11-4) stayed true to their national ranking as the No. 5 squad in the nation — topping all the teams with lower national rankings, but losing out to No. 4 Stanford for the second time this season.
The Cal squad opened up the tournament with a match against No. 13 UC San Diego on Saturday. After dominating the Tritons in the first quarter, the Bears took a 5-1 lead into the second period with a four-point margin that UC San Diego would not be able to recover from. Junior goalie Jon Sibley finished the match with 13 saves, while freshman Thomas Carroll led the Bears in scoring with three goals in the first half.
With a victory in the first bracket of the tournament, Cal went head-to-head against its rivals from across the Bay on Saturday evening for a chance to reach the semifinals of the Invitational. Earlier in the season at the NorCal Invitational on Sept. 22, Cal dropped a 12-10 decision to the Cardinal in the final third-place match of the tournament.
Although Cal led Stanford 9-8 moving into the fourth quarter, three minutes into the period Stanford’s Alex Bowen scored to knot the game at 9-9. Sophomore Colin Mulcahy struck back with a five-meter penalty shot conversion to give the Bears a 10-9 advantage with four minutes left in the game. But then the Cardinal managed to shutout the Bears defensively and score three times in the last few minutes of the game to garner a 12-10 win.
On Saturday, the Bears just could not find their rhythm until the third quarter, but by then it was too late for the Bears to bounce back from Stanford’s strong offensive plays. Despite junior Aleksa Saponjic’s three goals, the Cal squad could not keep up offensively with the Cardinal, falling 14-8 to end play on Saturday.
The next morning, the Bears rebounded from a sluggish start against No. 9 UC Irvine by outscoring the Anteaters 6-3 in the second half of the match. Senior Hunter Gettelfinger contributed two goals during the third period when the Cal team defensively shutout UC Irvine, holding them goalless for the entire eight minutes. The Anteaters eventually fell to the Bears by two points, 11-9.
“I was happy with the team fighting back from a slow start,” said Cal coach Kirk Everist in an interview with calbears.com. “We got great offense from (Farrel) South and (Colin) Mulcahy and the team defense held UC Irvine to just two goals in the final 20 minutes.”
In the fifth-place match up against UC Santa Barbara, the Bears demolished the No. 6 Gauchos, 11-3, to end the weekend tournament with a 3-1 tournament record. The Cal squad kept UCSB’s offensive production to a bare minimum, only allowing the Gauchos at most one goal per quarter.
The Bears finished the SoCal Invitational in fifth place — and still lack a win from a top-five opponent. The squad will next take on UC Santa Barbara for the second time in a row in an MPSF conference match next Saturday.
Janice Chua covers men’s water polo. Contact her at [email protected].