Women of Troy down Spartans at home

By maheen sahoo · Daily Trojan

Posted April 17, 2011 at 6:54 pm in Sports, Waterpolo

Senior Day at McDonald’s Swim Stadium might not have started off the right way, but it ended perfectly for USC.

The No. 4 USC women’s water polo team finished regular season play Saturday, sending its four seniors out with a 13-10 win, and snapping No. 7 San Jose State’s four-game winning streak.

Despite a six-goal day from San Jose State’s Adriana Vogt, the Women of Troy (16-5, 4-3) were aided by a balanced attack.

Senior two-meter Kristen Dronberger registered a hat trick in her final home match. Senior driver Joelle Bekhazi also had two goals, as did junior driver Nadia Dan and freshman two-meter Madeline Rosenthal.

USC struggled offensively in the first half, although its defense held strong. The Women of Troy limited the Spartans (20-10, 2-4) to just one goal in the second period, leaving the score tied 5-5 at halftime.

USC started the third period strong and never looked back.

Sophomore two-meter Patricia Jancso, Rosenthal, sophomore driver Blair Moody, senior two-meter Sarah Van Norman and junior two-meter Kara-Leigh Huse all registered goals before San Jose State could score their first goal of the period.

In general, the team was pleased with the final score and its performance.

“I thought that we just coming at them,” Dronberger said. “The offense kept going and going. We didn’t play the best defense but there are things that we can improve on all the time 
 We really, really played to our benefit”

USC coach Jovan Vavic was also happy with the team’s success, especially given its past losses this season to Stanford and UCLA.

“We did a good job in the areas with our set up plays, to set up an offensive attack,” Vavic said. “Six-on-5 was better than our last few games and we scored more percentage-wise than the last few games. We just have to defend better.”

The game was delayed 15 minutes because the scoreboard at McDonald’s Swim Stadium faced technical difficulties, and officials eventually decided to begin the game with a dysfunctional scoreboard. The, players, however, were not fazed.

“If anything [the scoreboard being broken] was helping us focus on the game and not worry about the scoreboard,” Bekhazi said. “It really helped us stay in the game.”

With the regular season complete, the Women of Troy will focus on the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament, slated to begin April 29. Heading into the tournament, the team will be ranked as a No. 5 seed.

“Like every single team that goes into this home stretch of the season, we only have one thing on our minds and that is to win it all,” Dronberger said. “We are going to have a tough couple weeks of training coming up before tournament play and we just need to put our nose to the grindstone and work as hard as we possibly can.”

Comments are closed.

More News

  Daily Trojan Spring Awakening Supplement

Blogs

Daily Trojan Poll

Which headliner did you enjoy most at Springfest?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Archives

April 2011
S M T W T F S
« Mar   May »
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930

Browse Archives

News

SPECIAL FEATURE: Prof loses tenure bid after appeal

On April 3, Assistant Professor of International Relations Mai’a Keapuolani Davis Cross, who had traveled cross-country from her tenure track position at Colgate University to ...

Center to host more concerts after deal with Nederlander

The Galen Center entered into a deal last week with Nederlander Concerts, a Los Angeles-based company that organizes concerts with venues, to increase the numbers ...

Annenberg creates community pay phones

A group of USC students, community members and local artists in Leimert Park are bringing the pay phone back into service — and hoping to ...

Opinion

’SC sets example in lowering dropout rate

A report sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reveals that the nation’s higher education system is facing a dropout crisis. Produced in part ...

Should the GuantĂĄnamo Bay prison remain open?

The prison must be closed as it stands for hypocrisy and infringes upon international human rights.  One hundred of the total 166 inmates at the Guantånamo ...

The Internet celebrates 20th birthday

Tuesday marked the 20th anniversary of the creation of World Wide Web. The organization responsible for building the Internet, CERN, also created the Large Hadron ...

Sports

Trojans begin three-game homestand against TCU

As the USC baseball team enters the final month of its baseball season 11 games under .500, it can at least feel good that it ...

USC faces North Florida in first round of tournament

For the No. 4 USC women’s sand volleyball team, its entire season has led up to this tournament. The team will finally be put to the ...

Jovan, Monica Vavic earn league awards

When it comes to dominating the competition in the pool, nobody does it better than the Vavic family. Following a season in which head coach ...

Lifestyle

An Exercise in Authenticity

Though Generation Um
includes a star studded cast—Keanu Reeves, Bojana Novakovic, and Adelaide Clemens—this film surprisingly has more of an indie vibe.  Set in New York ...

History behind shakes

Though finals loom as obstacles between now and summer, Ground Zero Performance Café has the perfect solution for both cooling down and serving your study ...

Play creates darker version of J.M. Barrie’s classic tale

Before Disney’s Peter, Wendy, John and Michael flew over “poor Nana” toward Big Ben and continued to the second star to the right and straight ...

Photos

In Photos: Washington comes to USC

In Photos: Washington comes to USC

The Schwarzenegger Institute held an immigration reform forum titled "Washington comes to USC", with U.S Senators John McCain, Michael Bennet and former President of Mexico ...

In Photos: Armenian Genocide

Photos by Ani Kolangian [gallery link="file" ids="66554,66555,66556,66557,66558,66559,66560,66561,66562"]

In Photos: Springfest 2013

Photos by Priyanka Patel. [gallery link="file" ids="65587,65586,65585,65584,65583,65582,65581,65580,65579,65578,65577,65576"]