Stanford upsets No. 1 USC on late goal
It was a slugfest on Saturday for No. 1 USC men’s water polo’s matchup at No. 3 Stanford, and the Trojans couldn’t quite pull off a win, dropping a tight 11-10 game in Palo Alto.
Go to war · Senior driver Kostas Genidounias notched three goals in a losing effort on Saturday. The Athens, Greece, native has 57 goals this year. – Mariya Dondonyan | Daily Trojan
Though the Trojans are used to playing rematches at this point in the season, USC and Stanford had not met in the 2014 season before Saturday. The teams missed each other in the NorCal Classic, where Stanford played in the championship game and USC played in the third-place game, and the SoCal Tournament, where USC played in the championship and Stanford played in the third-place game.
Stanford and USC exchanged goals in the first. By the end of the first frame, the Cardinal and the Trojans were tied 2-2. In the second frame, however, Stanford would distance themselves from the Trojans. The third-place finishers at the SoCal tournament scored three unanswered goals to gain a 5-2 lead at the half.
The Trojans would fight their way back to a one-goal deficit at 5-6, but the Cardinal would start to distance itself again regaining its three-goal lead at 8-5. Despite that, a goal by senior driver Rex Butler would get USC back within two goals going into the fourth frame. Sophomore driver Nick Bell, who recently earned MPSF Player of the Week honors, and senior driver Kostas Genidounias would bring the Trojans back to even with the Cardinal in the fourth at 8-8.
The rest of the game was spent with the two powerhouse teams trading goals. Bell tied it up at 9-9, and Butler would tie it up at 10-10 after Stanford had retaken the lead again.
Though the Trojans scored in the last minute to beat California by one goal in the SoCal Tournament Championship a week ago, Stanford scored a last-minute goal against the Trojans to take an 11-10 lead with 41 seconds to go. Freshman driver Grant Stein provided USC’s last-ditch effort but his shot hit the crossbar with 10 seconds to go. The Trojans never held a lead in the game by the time the final buzzer sounded.
Having recently been on both sides of a late game-winning goal, USC head coach Jovan Vavic knows these close games are the result of a combination of luck and preparation.
“I always believe that hard working teams always create their own luck,” Vavic said. “To me the luck is created by the teams who want it more, teams that work harder, the team that is better prepared, the team that’s more determined. Luck in life, not just in sports, follows the people who work harder, people that are expecting to do well, people that are not afraid of failure.”
Though the Trojans have a very young team this season, a few members of the squad must have had flashbacks to a similar loss against Stanford last year, when then-No. 2 USC hosted then-No. 4 Stanford. In that game, the Cardinal controlled the game until the Trojans took a lead in overtime. But Stanford stole a 17-16 win with a shocking buzzer beater on the last second of overtime.
Perhaps the freshmen who weren’t here for that loss could have benefited from that experience, as no freshmen scored for USC on Saturday. In fact, only four Trojans scored in total. Three of the scorers were seniors. Butler, led the Trojans in scoring with four goals, Genidounias had three, and senior two-meter Max Hurst-Mendoza added one. Only one non-senior scored, and that was sophomore Bell, who had two goals.
While the Trojans were not exactly on their game, Stanford goalie Drew Holland was. He averaged 8.77 saves per game going into the contest, but racked up 20 saves against the Trojans, twice as many as USC freshman goalkeeper McQuin Baron.
Vavic explained that Stanford’s goalie’s dominance frustrated the Trojans.
“In the first two quarters of the game, we went 2-for-20 shooting,” Vavic said. “That’s 10 percent. We shot the ball very poorly and very unintelligently, and we got the goalie hot. When you get the goalie hot, it’s tough because in water polo when the goalie blocks a couple of shots early in the game he gets confident, and it becomes tougher and tougher.”
This weekend top-ranked USC lost to No. 3 Stanford and No. 2 Cal lost to No. 4 UCLA, which continues a trend of parity among the top few teams in the MPSF.
Next up for the Trojans is a trip to take on LMU on Thursday, Oct. 23, before returning home for just their second home game of the season for a rematch against Pacific on Saturday, Oct. 25 at 1 p.m.