With their spirits up from last week's 16-4 drubbing of Pacific, the Cal men's water polo team heads out to Pepperdine to accomplish what they failed to do three weeks ago at the NorCal tournament-beat the best teams in the land-at the SoCal tournament.

"I think we're starting to figure some things out," Bears coach Kirk Everist said. "The (Pacific) game was a good step forward, (but) we're going to have to play better to get out of the first day."

In their opening matchup the Bears will be pitted against No. 13 St. Francis (7-3) and, if they are able to advance, will face No. 4 Pepperdine (9-3, 1-1).

No. 5 Cal (7-3, 0-1) already had a run-in with St. Francis in the Navy Open when they beat the Terriers 10-6.

The key to the game was holding down St. Francis' two-meter man Nemanja Pucarevic, who is the Terriers' top offensive threat. The task of shutting down Pucarevic fell in the lap of junior Scott Cruikshank, who not only prevented Pucarevic from scoring but had two goals himself.

"They kind of neutralized each other the first go-around," St. Francis coach Carl Quigley said. "Scott did a really good job in that game, but again, it was the first weekend of the year and we've progressed and are able to meet the challenge this weekend."

Quigley is optimistic that the Terriers have the ability to flip the result from the Navy Open now that his team has gotten some games under their belt.

Everist sees eye-to-eye with Quigley on this point in the sense that he expects a stiffer opponent come Saturday.

"St. Francis is somebody we've played, but we haven't really played them in the middle of the season," Everist said. "They have a lot of foreign players that can't come and train in the summer so they show up right before school starts. By now they'll be in better physical shape, which will make them a tougher team."

To make sure the Bears get to play on Sunday, Cruikshank is aiming to replicate his play of high-intensity defense that could crush St. Francis' morale.

"After coming out and putting pressure on them and scoring a lot of goals early in the game, they started getting down amongst themselves and they fell apart quickly," Cruikshank said.

Looking past the opening match, the road to the SoCal title will only get tougher for the Bears. In all likelihood, their next game will be against Pepperdine, who beat the Bears two weeks ago.

Like last time, the Waves will once again have their home crowd behind them urging them on to upset one of the traditional water polo powerhouses.

Cruikshank is not phased at all with the possibility of having to play two high-ranked teams to simply make it to the second day. Instead, he thinks it might help the Bears overcome their recent woes.

"Our path to the championship is tougher," Cruikshank said. "Our team has seen what we need to fix; having a couple tough games kind of made us realize what we need to win. I think figuring out that tougher challenge to get to the championship will actually force us to do even better than we would in easier games."

Tags: CAL MEN'S WATER POLO