This weekend, No. 3 men’s water polo will kick off Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play in Northern California with games against two top-ranked squads. 

Coming off dominant wins over then-top 10 teams last weekend, the Trojans (12-1) will take on No. 4 Stanford (8-2) on Saturday and No. 2 UC Berkeley (11-1) on Sunday. 

The MPSF West Division is made up of the top four ranked teams in the country, including No. 1 UCLA (15-0) and USC’s two opponents this weekend.

In the past two games, the Trojans have had good showings on both offense and defense, crushing No. 17 University of the Pacific (7-4), 14-7, and No. 8 UC Davis (6-7), 19-9. 

USC will first face the Cardinal on Saturday. The teams recently faced each other Sept. 21 when the Trojans defeated the Cardinal 14-12, in a back-and-forth overtime contest.

A standout Trojan in this game was junior driver Robert López Duart, who matched his career-high of five goals to contribute to his team-high 36 goals so far this season. The last time he scored as many goals was also against Stanford on the exact date the previous year.

Other standouts who could push USC over the edge are senior driver Mihalio Vukazic and junior utility Stefan Brankovic. Vukazic has put together a good offensive season for himself with 30 goals and 14 assists so far. Brankovic, meanwhile, is the team’s assist leader at 24 and added four of those against UC Davis last weekend.

Since their last meeting, the Cardinal are 2-0, showing offensive prowess against No. 6 San Jose State University (4-3) and No. 10 Pepperdine University (8-6), winning 12-5 and 19-14 respectively. 

Two players the Trojans need to look out for are MPSF player of the week sophomore attacker Botond Balogh and redshirt senior attacker Gianpiero Di Martire, who scored five goals each in the Cardinal win over Pepperdine. On the season, Balogh and Di Martire are Stanford’s leading scorers with 31 and 27 goals, respectively. 

In their Sept. 20 meeting, the Golden Bears handed USC their first and only loss of the season thus far, 13-11, in USC’s second-lowest scoring game of the season, thanks to a tough Cal defense. 

On offense, the Bears’ leading scorer is freshman attacker Beso Akhvlediani with 32 goals. He scored four goals against the Trojans in their last meeting.

The Trojan’s offense did see a second-half resurgence after being down 8-4 at halftime, but it was too little too late. The Bears held onto its lead despite senior utility Andrej Grgurevic’s fifth goal of the game, bringing the score within one at 12-11 with about three minutes to go in the fourth quarter. Cal freshman attacker Kai Inoue shut down USC by extending the Bears’ lead 13-11.

Since then, the Bears are 1-1 after suffering their first loss to UCLA, 11-9. The loss to the Bruins was Cal’s lowest-scoring non-exhibition game of the season.

The Trojans will face Stanford at 1 p.m. Oct. 4 at Avery Aquatic Center before heading to Berkeley to face the Bears at Spieker Aquatics Complex on Oct. 5 at 1 p.m.