Women of Troy fall to Stanford in overtime thriller

The Sunday showdown between No. 3 USC (14-2, 0-1) and No. 2 Stanford (14-1, 1-0) was a thriller that resulted in a 12-9 loss for USC in overtime.

The matchup pitted the last two national champions, who both came in to the game with a lone loss to UCLA. USC star Monica Vavic came into the matchup with 251 goals, four away of tying No. 1 on the USC women’s water polo all-time scoring list.

USC held the momentum in the first quarter and went into the second quarter with a 2-1 lead as both Vavic and Avery Peterson scored. The game changed quickly, however, as Stanford score four unanswered goals in the second to take a 5-2 lead into the half.

Knowing that they still had a good chance, Monica’s answer for getting back in the game and advice for her teammates was simple.

“When Stanford went up by three goals, 5-2, their team was simply working harder than us,” Vavic said.” They were hustling more, they were getting rebounds, they were driving harder, they were communicating better on defense and they were outworking us.”

The third quarter went back and forth. USC’s Jayde Appel struck first with 6:05 left in the period, but on the next possession, Stanford’s Jamie Neushul scored her second of three goals. Then with 3:10 left in the period, Maggie Steffens scored her second of the day to put Stanford up 7-3.

Senior Eike Daube came back less than a minute later with a huge goal of her own to make the score 7-4.  Then, it looked like the Trojans had all the momentum in hand going into the fourth when Monica scored with 41 seconds left, but Grossman would get of a shot that went directly into the back of the net with 8 seconds left. The Women of Troy were still down three but greatly improved from the first half, especially offensively. Daube thinks this improvement was a mental one.

“I think it really came down to changing our mentality and recognizing open opportunities,” Daube said. “I think in the beginning, it was kind of hard to see when you are open to be as aggressive, but we definitely turned that around in the second half.”

The Women of Troy continued to turn it around in the fourth with the spark of sophomore driver Stephania Haralabidis’s goal with 6:52 left to make it 8-6. About two and a half minutes later, Daube would score another big goal to decrease the deficit to one.

With 3:24 left, Gurpreet Sohi stopped the USC run making the score 9-7. Less than 30 seconds later, graduate student Jennifer Stiefel answered right back. Finally, at the 1:34 mark, Haralabidis would tie the game up at 9-9. Stanford had 2 good opportunities to score in the last minute but freshman goalie Victoria Chamorro made two huge saves for the women of and the game headed to overtime.

The Women of Troy were unable to take their momentum into overtime, though. Stanford would go on to score three unanswered goals in overtime to take the game 12-9.

“In overtime again, same as the second quarter, we were complacent in defense, we left holes, we didn’t focus on defending the play all the ways through the end,” Vavic said.

Another missing component for most of overtime was Eike Daube. She got her third ejection and was disqualified early in overtime, though she remained positive about the team’s progression after the game.

“I think it’s still a long season ahead of us and that’s definitely a testament to our character as a team,” Daube said. We’re not the kind of team that gives up, nor do I ever plan to be, but it’s a long season, and I hope that with our mentality being what it is that we continue and hopefully we can finish the season with a national championship. That’s the goal.”

The Women of Troy are back in action in another home game against Arizona State on Friday, March 13 at 6 p.m. Vavic will continue her climb to becoming the program’s all-time leading scorer, currently standing three goals away.