USC gears up for tilts with LMU, Pacific
A battle to the bitter end last Saturday saw the then-No.1 USC men’s water polo team claw its way back from deficit several times against then-No. 3 Stanford. After ultimately falling to the Cardinal by one goal, however, the Trojans (16-3) will look to pick themselves back up once more when they face Loyola Marymount (5-12) today and Pacific (12-7) this Saturday.
King of wings · Redshirt senior driver Rex Butler had four goals in the Trojans’ loss to Stanford last week and will look to lead USC past – Mariya Dondonyan | Daily Trojan
The Trojans suffered their third loss of the year and first loss in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation conference play after a goal in the closing stages gave the Cardinal an 11-10 victory. USC has now lost to all three of the other “Big Four” teams in men’s water polo — Stanford, Cal and UCLA — but with all three losses coming by margins of two goals or less, head coach Jovan Vavic believes his team can only go up from here.
“When you look at the way we played defensively [against Stanford], and that we only lost by one, I think there’s lots of positives,” Vavic said. “I think overall it’s not really a terrible loss. Considering this is the first time we played [the Cardinal], we played them in their own pool and they’re a very experienced team — they haven’t really lost much, and we’re playing with a completely new team — I feel pretty good about our chances next time we play them.”
Today’s game against LMU marks the Trojans’ first meeting of the year with the Lions. Saturday’s matchup against Pacific will be both the USC’s second home game of the year at Uytengsu Aquatic Center and its second time facing the Tigers. The Trojans topped the Tigers in last year’s NCAA Finals to win their sixth straight national championship, and defeated the Tigers in the rematch 10-3 at this season’s Triton Tournament on Sept. 7.
With a chance to get back on the right track against LMU and Pacific, Vavic made better power play defense a focal point for the future, citing the Trojans’ SoCal Tournament title win earlier in the season.
“The reason we won the SoCal Tournament was because our down-man defense was excellent. Excellent,” Vavic said. “In this game, it was terrible. Stanford scored six goals out of eight 6-on-5 opportunities, and that’s a terrible percentage for us. At the same time our 6-on-5 against Stanford was three [goals] out of seven [opportunities]. Those are two areas right there that make a difference in winning and losing — we score one and we stop them once, we win the game.”
Despite never leading in last weekend’s game, the Trojans persisted through multi-goal deficits at the end of both the first and second halves. Redshirt senior driver Rex Butler, who scored late in the fourth quarter against Stanford to equalize the game at 10-all, emphasized the need to remain persistent through the upcoming matchups.
“I think we showed great resilience,” Butler said. “It’s always disappointing to take a loss like that, but the most important thing is to learn from our mistakes and make sure the loss doesn’t go to waste. We’ve got to correct every mistake and move forward.”
As they move forward, the Trojans will want to stave off any potential upsets this week and use the two games to regain their offensive rhythm. Though the team scored ten goals, Stanford goalie Drew Holland tallied 20 saves, which USC senior driver Kostas Genidounias attributed to the Trojans’ own failure to finish at the cage.
“It was really just bad [shooting] by us,” Genidounias said. “In the first half [against Stanford] we were two out of twenty [in shots]. Out of these 18 shots we missed, around 10 to 12 were right on the goalkeeper, so we made him look like a hero when we just didn’t shoot well.”
The Trojans travel to Westchester, California, today to face the Lions starting at 4 p.m. before returning home for their 1 p.m. game Saturday at Uytengsu Aquatics Center.