USC prepares for the season’s home stretch

After narrowly dropping its fourth game of the year to No. 1 UCLA last Sunday, the No. 3 USC men’s water polo team will try to kickstart a late hot streak against No. 4 Long Beach State on Saturday and No. 12 UC Irvine on Sunday and try to channel the magic of last year’s NCAA Championship team.

“If we can go 3-0 in the next three games, we’re going to have the same record as last year’s team had going into the conference tournament,” USC head coach Jovan Vavic said. “Considering that we have nine freshmen playing, I don’t think that’s bad. I think how we respond in those three games is going to tell a lot about what kind of a team we have, and I, at this point, still strongly believe we have the best team in the nation.”

Last year, the Trojans went 28-4 and swept the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament en route to winning their sixth straight national title. After the Bruins dealt the Trojans their second loss in the 2014 cross-town series by a score of 10-8 on Nov. 2, redshirt junior two-meter Mac Carden looked to last year as a source of motivation.

“It was a tough loss [against UCLA],” Carden said. “We knew coming into the season that nothing is easy. Last year we went into the conference tournament in fourth place, and last year we had to overcome some odds, so we expect to do the same this year.”

With Saturday’s matchup against Long Beach State marking the final stretch of the regular season, the Trojans seek to execute at a high level  at the end of games — both Carden and senior driver Rex Butler said the team strayed from its game plan in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game. Butler noted the team’s shift in concentration at the end of the loss against the Bruins.

“We just need to be more focused defensively,” Butler said. “That game we were just trying to win it with offense, and we made a lot of mental mistakes. We gave up a lot of easy goals in the fourth quarter, and our offense wasn’t working.”

The 18-4 Trojans, who are 3-2 in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play, will emphasize defense as they look to bounce back against the Zacchary Kappos-led 49ers. With a team-high 51 goals on the year, Kappos has helped the 49ers earn an identical 18-4 record in 2014, with a 5-1 conference record. The 49ers’ four losses came at the hands of California (twice), UC Santa Barbara and Stanford, all three of which are ranked in the top 10 in the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s most recent poll.

The Anteaters, meanwhile, are 13-9 overall and just 1-5 in conference play. They’ll head into the matchup coming off a game against UC San Diego the day before, and three straight losses before that. The Anteaters are led by UCLA transfer Lovre Milos, a driver with a whopping 78 goals as of now.

This weekend, USC will try to muster the resiliency that has been a theme throughout the year — the Trojans have outscored their opponents 50-23 combined in three games after losses this year.

“A special thing about our team is that usually after losses, our coaching staff and our leadership really use that loss to motivate us to train a little harder and be a little more focused,” Butler said. “That’s where that resiliency comes from.”

The 12-time Coach of the Year emphasized the importance of keeping these losses from flustering the team as it begins the final stretch this weekend.

“It’s a process,” Vavic said. “You look at last year’s [San Antonio] Spurs, you look at last year’s NFL champions [Seattle Seahawks] — adversity is part of life, it’s part of sports. You really can’t labor on mistakes, you need to figure out what really is wrong and why it went wrong. That’s the challenge, and that’s what I love about coaching.”