Riding a 12-game win streak heading into the first-place match against No. 2 Stanford, USC women’s water polo had all the momentum as the MPSF tournament’s No. 1 seed. 

In their last meeting, the No. 1 Trojans (22-3, 6-0 MPSF) came away with a come-from-behind 11-10 victory over the Cardinal (14-1, 5-1), kickstarting a three-game winning streak to close out the regular season. With that gauntlet consisting of quality wins over Stanford, No. 3 UCLA (20-4, 4-2) and N0. 4 UC Berkeley (14-7, 3-3), the Trojans seemed to have peaked at the perfect time.  

When it came time to finish the job at the conference tournament, however, the Trojans were unable to maintain their momentum, falling to the Cardinal and missing out on their first MPSF title since 2021.

“We were really close,” said third-year Head Coach Casey Moon in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “We match up well against them; it was just a few moments [of] carelessness on our end. We [have] got to finish our high percentage opportunities against a good team like Stanford … [which] at the end of the day, come [and] bite you.”

Trojans take down Cal to advance

Before facing off against Stanford in the final, USC had to battle against the Golden Bears in the semifinals to advance.

Down 6-4 late in the second quarter, the Trojans looked to their leading scorer in sophomore attacker Emily Ausmus, who kick-started a three-goal USC run to give the team a 7-6 lead heading into halftime. Picking up right where they left off, the Trojans added another two goals from junior attacker Ava Stryker and senior attacker Morgan Netherton to grow their lead.

With a four-goal cushion, USC went back and forth with the Bears, trading goals but never allowing Cal to even the score. While the Bears managed to pull the game within one goal late in the fourth quarter, goals from junior attacker Meghan McAninch and sophomore center Alma Yaacobi iced the game for the Trojans, securing a 17-14 win. 

“We started down against Cal in our semifinal game, and slowly made our way back up, and then ended up beating them by a good amount,” McAninch said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “I’m really proud of the way that we fought throughout the weekend.”

Title match ends in heartbreak

As with its previous matchup against Stanford, USC would fight until the last second. A back-and-forth from start to finish, neither team was able to grow its lead beyond two points for the majority of the game. 

A goal from Stryker opened up the scoring for the Trojans before the Cardinal fired back with back-to-back goals. While McAninch would answer with a goal of her own to even it at two, Stanford responded with another two goals, doubling USC’s score to lead 4-2 at the end of the first quarter. 

While the opening minutes started out as an offensive volley, the second quarter proved to be a slower, more defensive affair. Redshirt sophomore goalie Anna Reed would tally four of her seven saves in the quarter, keeping the Cardinal out of the net and allowing the Trojan offense to bring the score within one.

This defensive affair wouldn’t last long, however: The offense erupted in the third quarter, with the two teams combining for 13 goals, culminating in a 12-10 USC lead entering the final period. 

In response, Stanford rattled off four straight goals and six of the last eight to put the game away. While a late goal from Ausmus brought the score within two, it wouldn’t be enough: USC fell 16-14.

McAninch said the team’s inability to lock down Stanford’s top scorers was a key factor in the loss.

“We need to do a better job knowing when players get hot,” McAninch said. “One girl scored six goals against us, the other scored four. So just doing a better job at recognizing that earlier in the game, so that we can cover them better in the second half.”

Despite the added stakes of the NCAA Tournament’s single-elimination format, Moon and the Trojans remain consistent in their approach as the team heads into its season finale.

“Our preparation will be the same. We’re gonna work on our fitness [and] some situational things throughout parts of the game,” Moon said. “We really want to focus on our fundamentals. This is something that we’ve been building and working on the entire season.”

USC will open up the NCAA Tournament against No. 8 Loyola Marymount University (23-4, 6-0 Golden Coast Conference) on April 24 at 6 p.m. in La Jolla, California. From there, they’ll take on the winner of No. 10 Harvard (26-3, 5-1 Collegiate Water Polo Association) and UCLA. 

With a win, the Trojans would advance to the championship game, where they will likely face either Cal or Stanford on their path to claiming an NCAA title for the first time since 2021.