In the end, UC-Irvine’s Colin Mello was the difference. The No. 4 Stanford men’s water polo team could not contain the junior driver, as he scored four times in Saturday’s 9-8 upset loss to No. 11 Irvine.

Mello, who has 76 goals on the season for the Anteaters (9-15, 1-4 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) notched the game-winning goal with 1:57 left. The Cardinal (15-7, 4-3) have done a fine job in the past containing teams with essentially one primary scorer but could not find a way to stop Mello.

“Saturday we just came out flat, and never got out of it,” said sophomore two-meter Ryan McCarthy. “A lot of us just didn’t have good games.”

Stanford’s offense was led by senior captain Tyler Drake, who scored four times. Fellow senior captain JJ Garton, junior two-meter defender Ryan Fortune and McCarthy all added goals as well.

Nevertheless, the loss has repercussions for the Cardinal’s seeding in the MSPF Tournament two weeks from now. The team has taken a step back to look at the larger picture and will not let the loss ruin its focus.

“It was definitely a hard loss to swallow on Saturday because it essentially takes us out of a potential third place seeding in the MPSF tournament,” Garton said. “However, what is really important is that it does not change what we have to accomplish at MPSFs. We have known that we will have to win all three games at MPSF to advance to NCAAs. This is unchanged by the loss on Saturday.”

The Cardinal bounced back nicely on Sunday, crushing No. 17 Santa Clara with a score of 13-5. It was Stanford’s game to win from the start, and the Cardinal were up 8-1 by halftime.

“Today we came out and did what we were supposed to do,” McCarthy said. “Santa Clara [13-14] is a good team and they play their opponents tough so we had to get on them early and that’s what we did. [Stanford freshman driver] Sage Wright had a great game today and really opened things up for us.”

Freshman utility Drac Wigo, Wright and McCarthy all scored three goals. Garton and sophomore driver Chris Jacobson chipped in with two goals as well.

“The Santa Clara game was a good win for us after having a flat game against UCI,” Garton said.”We came out strong and played well against them. We need to take the momentum of this win through the week and have a great game this Saturday against UOP.”

After Saturday’s match against Pacific, the Cardinal will move on to the MSPF Tournament.

As the regular season winds down, the postseason and its pressure lingers.

“We, as a team, realize that we still have to win MPSF — though our road will be a bit more difficult — but we are keeping our focus on our main season goal: making it to the NCAA tournament,” Garton said. “What is important now is that we learn from this weekend and move forward so that we can peak at the appropriate time. The rest of the regular season is all about building confidence and momentum into the MPSF tournament so that we leave everything in the pool that weekend.”