No. 1 USC men’s water polo faces No. 3 Stanford

With wins  over then-No. 1 UCLA and then-No. 3 Cal last weekend en route to capturing its third straight SoCal Tournament Championship, the USC men’s water polo team recently claimed the top spot in the Collegiate Water Polo Association rankings for the first time this season.

Set to face third-ranked  Stanford in Palo Alto on Oct. 18, the now-No. 1 USC team will head to Palo Alto this weekend looking to assert its position as king of the hill.

The six-time defending NCAA champion Trojans defeated the host-Bruins 10-6 in the semifinals of the SoCal Tournament last weekend and edged out the Bears 10-9 in the finals, gaining retribution for their only two losses of the year — the Trojans fell in their first meetings with both the Bruins and the Bears at the Kap7 NorCal Classic last month.

Sophomore driver Nick Bell proved to be the difference for the Trojans last weekend.

Bell, who missed the first 13 games of the year — including the NorCal Classic — with a back injury, notched 10 goals through four games at the SoCal Tournament and earned Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Player of the Week honors for his efforts.

“I’d been out for eight weeks, and I just had that fire in me, that desire to get back in there and play with my team,” Bell said. “I think it was very important for us to win this tournament. It let everyone know that we’re here to play — we’re not here for third, we’re not here for fourth. We’re here to win the championship.”

Standing at 16-2 on the season and 2-0 in conference play, the youthful Trojan squad will have its championship capabilities put to the test once again in this weekend’s battle between No. 1 and No. 3.

Stanford’s two losses also came at the hands of Cal and UCLA, but just like the Trojans, the Cardinal have also beaten both those teams at different points this season.

USC head coach Vavic knows that overcoming the Cardinal (15-2, 1-0 MPSF) won’t be easy considering the parity and the any-given-day nature of the MPSF conference.

“Stanford is one of the most dangerous counter-attack teams in the country, so we’re going to have to work on stopping that,” Vavic said. “They’ve also got two of the best players in the country in [driver] Bret Bonanni and [utility man] Alex Bowen, so we’ve got to make sure we make clean passes through the center  and really be focused — one difference between the NorCal and SoCal tournament is that we were much more focused in those two games at SoCal.”

Bonanni and Bowen have the most career goals among active Cardinal with over 220 each. Bonanni is the Stanford’s top scorer on the 2014 season with 54 scores, while Bowen sits at third with 33 goals. USC senior driver Kostas Genidounias, who boasts 54 goals already this season, believes the key to victory in Palo Alto will be defense, as it was in Westwood.

“The mentality and the focus is going to be on defense again, like how we’ve been doing for the past couple weeks after the NorCal Tournament,” Genidounias said. “The goals are going to come by themselves on offense, so we’re going to try to figure out the best way to stop them, and that’s going to be it.”

Genidounias has provided most of the offense for the Trojans this year, but USC’s young goalie play has also been impressive. Freshman goalie McQuin Baron is averaging 10.62 saves per game and is allowing just 6.4 goals per game.

Fellow freshman goalie Ben Goncharenko has also made a few appearances, and is putting up similar numbers: 5.33 saves per game and 4.89 goals per game.

Their captain, Genidounias, whose 54 scores on the season tie him for second in the nation, continues to be optimistic yet cautious about the team’s title chances as it enters the latter half of the regular season.

“Now, all four top teams have two losses, so that makes us even — it’s like the season starts over,” Genidounias said. “[The SoCal Tournament win] gave us a lot of confidence for the rest of the season. I know everyone is excited for these two big wins [over UCLA and Cal], but we need to remain humble, we need to remain focused, we need to take each game separately and play as hard as we can.”