USC battles Stanford for first place
Posted November 12, 2009 at 11:35 pm in Sports, Waterpolo
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Loading ...Despite the myriad challenges the No. 1 USC men’s water polo team has faced — and, for the most part, overcome — this season, Saturday’s game against No. 3 Stanford at McDonald’s Swim Stadium may prove to be its biggest yet.
Stanford, which enters the weekend at 19-1 and 6-0 in the conference, hasn’t lost since Oct. 11, and has been ranked in the top three nationally the entire season. The Cardinal won both the Navy and the NorCal tournaments at the beginning of the season, and during that time held the No. 1 ranking while the Trojans stalled in third place.
“It’ll be another tough match,” said sophomore goalkeeper Joel Dennerley. “It was tough last year, and they’re pretty dominant this year, so it’ll be a challenge for us.”
Surprisingly, the two teams have not met yet this season, despite their successes. USC and Stanford have participated in two tournaments — the NorCal Tournament in Palo Alto, Calif., and the UCI Invitational in Irvine, Calif. — together, but after a Trojan loss to UCLA in the NorCal tourney and a Cardinal loss to Cal at UCI, the teams were never given the chance to square off against each other.
But while it may seem that the two squads have had little impact on each other this season, their recent history with each other leaves little to the Trojans’ imagination as to what to prepare for.
“We haven’t played Stanford this year, and not since the NCAA finals last year, but we still prepare the same way we would for any other team,” Dennerley said. “We’ve watched them at other tournaments. They lost a few players last year, but the core of their team is more or less still there and they are doing the same things. We’ll match up as we need to, but it’ll be a tough game.”
USC won all four of its games against Stanford last season, but three of them were decided by two goals or less. The most notable of the victories came in the NCAA championship game, in which the Trojans clinched their fourth national title with a 7-5 win. Every NCAA title the Trojans have won has come against Stanford.
The Trojans avoided a major obstacle last weekend against UCLA on the road to set the stage for this important match, beating the Bruins 7-6 on a last-minute score from junior driver Kyle Sterling. But last week’s game doesn’t change anything for the team as they head into this week’s match, USC coach Jovan Vavic said.
“The last game is over,” Vavic said. “This is a different opponent with different strengths, so we really have to get ready for it. We don’t labor on wins that much. We just have to get ready and execute. We have to focus on Stanford’s strengths, because they have a couple of really good players.”
The winner of this match will gain sole possession of first place in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation conference, and will likely take the first seed in the MPSF tournament in late November.
“I think both teams are going to be excited that we finally get to play each other,” Vavic said. “I think it’s going to be a very emotional game for both teams, because this is the first time we’ll see each other after the [NCAA tournament]. Both teams have one loss, and the winner will be in really good shape.”
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