On Sunday, in front of a lively crowd, No. 3 USC men’s water polo secured a crucial win against the No. 4-ranked team in the nation: the Pepperdine Waves. Three early goals by fifth year 2-meter Max Miller had the team off and running as they cruised past the Waves for a 16-7 finish to finish off the Triton Invitational. 

“It’s a great confidence boost, of course,” said Head Coach Marko Pintaric in an interview with the Daily Trojan Tuesday. “I mean going and [continuing to win,] it’s great for morale. It’s a great encouragement to have a great week of training.”

Pintaric’s squad has gotten off to an ideal start, as the Trojans have managed a combined score of 125 to 57, improving to 7-0 on the season on Sunday with their highest-ranked win so far. They also have earned big wins against No. 8 UC Davis (5-4) and No. 10 Long Beach State (6-2). 

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For transfers senior 2-meter Connor Cohen and sophomore driver Robert López Duart, these recent victories have been particularly impactful, taking down their former schools Pepperdine and Long Beach State, respectively.

“I think it really just helped us overcome this whole transfer mindset,” Cohen said after practice on Tuesday. “It just means a lot to step forward in a sense and really become one of the Trojan Family.”

Both players have quickly become staples of their new squad, especially Duart, who leads the team in multigoal games and was awarded the title of Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Sport Newcomer of the Week for a second consecutive week.

Miller was also honored by the conference this week, being named MPSF Player of the Week going into the crucially important invitational at Berkeley this weekend.

While USC’s performances have been all that can be desired so far, it will face tough competition in the weekend ahead. The MPSF Invitational will host five of the top six teams in the nation, including No. 1 UCLA, No. 2 Stanford, No. 5 UC Berkeley and No. 6 Princeton. These are teams that the Trojans will have to beat if they have aspirations of an MPSF or NCAA championship at the end of the season.

“We are just focused on each game, game by game. So we’re not really even too worried about who we play or what the outcome of the tournament and all the scheduling is going to be,” Cohen said. “We’re just focused on that first game, pretty sure we’re playing UC Davis again. So we’re just focused on overcoming that first [game], and we’ll worry about whatever happens later on.”

USC will not have the advantage of playing in their home pool as it did for its trio of games last weekend. The tournament will be hosted on Cal’s home turf at the Spieker Aquatics Complex, which may prove to be a difficult environment for the Trojans.

“That’s why [they] come to play for Trojans, to play these big tournaments, big games,” Pintaric said. “So we are expecting it to be crowdy, rowdy, tons of fans, and we welcome this type of environment.”

As the Trojans embark on their third straight weekend of tournament play, they are aided by their depth and health up to this point of the season. By next week, they will either feel very confident about their season’s prospects or have a lot of work to do to get back on track to win an 11th national championship.

The Trojans will make the trip up to Berkeley for the MPSF Invitational this weekend, which will take place from Friday to Sunday.

Daniel Palmore contributed to this report.