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NewsvineThe second-ranked Stanford men’s water polo team lost a nail-biter at No. 6 Long Beach State in a league contest this weekend, falling by a score of 6-4. Later that afternoon, the Cardinal beat Occidental, 17-6, in a friendly game.
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Redshirt senior two-meter defender Forrest Schwartz and the second-ranked Cardinal fell to No. 6 Long Beach on the road this weekend. Stanford had trouble converting in advantage situations and gave the 49ers too many opportunities to score in the loss. The team will finally play at home this coming weekend.
The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) loss to the 49ers dropped the Cardinal’s record to 1-2 in conference play, and 8-5 overall, as the team suffered its first loss to the 49ers in 11 games, a streak dating back to 2000.
A major disadvantage for the Cardinal came from six separate six-on-five matchups resulting from penalties during the third quarter. The 49ers were able to capitalize on four of their six extra-man possessions.
“We played hard today, but I think the difference between victory and loss was not being able to go six-on-six which created big problems for us,” senior goalkeeper Sandy Hohener said.
Junior utility Will Hindle-Katel scored 30 seconds into the game to give the Cardinal the early lead. Sophomore utility Sage Wright scored in the last seconds of the first quarter to put Stanford up 3-2. With goals from junior driver Andrew Drake, senior two-meter defender Ryan Fortune and freshman driver Alex Pulido as well, the Cardinal was able to hold off the 49ers until the end of the third quarter.
“I think we played well, but they beat us tactically,” Wright said. “We’re going to have to execute better fundamentally to win. We executed what we worked on during practice, focused on defense, but we needed to step up offensively.”
Despite Hohener’s best efforts and 11 blocked shots, Long Beach had its own defensive presence and held the Cardinal scoreless in the second period, as the 49ers’ offense scored twice to make the score 4-3 at halftime.
“We knew the entire game plan, and even though we stuck together and never got down, sometimes things just don’t work out for us,” Hohener said.
The 49ers clamped down on defense, especially during the third quarter, and limited Stanford to only one goal from five extra-man advantages while Long Beach State converted four of its six chances. The 49ers made very few mistakes down the stretch, as Stanford missed a series of opportunities midway through the third quarter, most of them resulting from the Long Beach’s pressure on the ball.
“I think we played fundamentally sound water polo today, and hopefully we will do better in [our other] MPSF games, where it’s just one game a day,” said senior Peter Finlayson. “[They] put us into a different mindset and we weren’t able to execute our game plan.”
The fourth quarter saw Pulido tie the game with a long-range shot at 5:29. That would be the last score for the Cardinal for the rest of the game. Long Beach’s Reid Tomassi scored a second goal at 4:47 and Joe Kinne converted an extra-man goal with 58 seconds left to put the Stanford team away.
The loss was a particularly tough one as Stanford needs to have a winning record in the MPSF in order to advance to the NCAA Championships. Although the Cardinal is still No. 2 in the nation, No. 3 Cal and No. 4 UCLA are close behind. However, Stanford has not beaten top-ranked USC in two years, suffering three losses to the Trojans already this season.
The Cardinal next hosts UC-Santa Barbara in its first home game in a month. Pepperdine will visit the following day. Both games will be MPSF contests.