After playing four games in two days at last weekend’s Stanford Invitational, the Stanford women’s water polo team certainly has a much lighter schedule for this weekend, with two matches in two days. The squad, however, is certainly aware that a lighter schedule should not be confused with a less important one.

The Cardinal, 4-1 on the year and ranked third in the nation, host conference foe Pacific on Saturday at 1 p.m. before squaring off against No. 8 UC-Davis on Sunday at noon. Both matches will be played at Avery Stadium.

Pacific has the exact opposite record of Stanford this season, standing at 1-4. The Tigers notched their first victory of the year last Saturday, but they have otherwise struggled thus far. The combined score of their first three games was 53-15 in favor of the opposition, and they have also been hurt by the fact that their leading scorer from last year, Sarah Harris, did not return to the team for her sophomore season.

The Card knows that it can’t look past Pacific, though. The team looks to start out strong and finish the game off as soon as it can.

“The Pacific game is important,” head coach John Tanner said. “It is a conference game and therefore has seeding implications for our conference tournament.”

Although UC-Davis is not a conference opponent, the Cardinal will still have its hands full on Sunday. The Aggies are 6-2 on the year and ranked No. 8 in the nation, with their only losses coming to No. 5 Cal and No. 16 UC-Santa Barbara. Tanner admitted that the match on Sunday would be difficult.

“Davis will be a significant challenge,” he said. “They have some very talented, competitive players and are always well-prepared to play us.”

Two such players who the Cardinal will have to mark closely are freshman Dakotah Mohr and senior Christi Raycraft, who are leading the Aggies with 13 and 11 goals, respectively.

Davis coach Jamey Wright told CSTV.com that the Aggies would look “to work on controlling the ball and controlling tempo,” trying to prevent Stanford from getting on the counter-attack. That is, however, much easier said than done against the Cardinal, as they proved in the Invitational tournament last weekend. Moreover, despite its strong showing at the tournament, Stanford is still looking to improve.

“This week we are sorting through our tournament games figuring out what we’re doing well and where we might make substantial improvements,” Tanner said. “I liked the way we played on Sunday — beating Cal and Hawaii — following our loss to USC.”

The way Stanford played after that one-goal loss showed that it was more than capable of bouncing back, and the confidence and momentum has grown over its last two games.

Junior driver Kira Hillman knows that it will be key for the Card to keep that same momentum going through this weekend and then throughout the rest of the season.

“It is really important to start off our individual [non-tournament] games strong,” she said.

That is why, even though this weekend’s games may not seem extremely important on paper, they may well be vital in determining the remainder of the season for the Cardinal.