This weekend will be a change of pace for the Stanford men’s water polo team, which is coming off its first loss of the conference season last weekend to UCLA and dropped out of the top spot in the national rankings to number three. The Cardinal (9-3, 2-1 MPSF) opens up a long weekend on Friday night with a visit to Stockton Calif., where it will face No. 6 Pacific.
It won’t end there, however, as Stanford then has four more games over the weekend, all at Santa Clara against teams from the East Coast–on Saturday the Card faces Bucknell and Harvard, followed by Brown and Air Force on Sunday.
Stanford previously faced Pacific at the NorCal Invitational in the team’s first weekend of the season, knocking off the Tigers 9-8 in overtime. The Cardinal’s overtime win against Pacific was followed by losses to USC and California in the semifinals and the third-place game, respectively–since then, Stanford has beaten both USC and Cal.
Still, Pacific boasts a very formidable offense, and Stanford should expect a tough game.
“They have one of the best 2-meters in the country and some very good outside shooters,” said redshirt junior driver Travis Noll in reference to Balazs Erdelyi, who leads the team with 35 goals and was last year’s MPSF Newcomer of the Year as a freshman.
The rest of the weekend will provide a different kind of test for the Cardinal. Games against teams from the other side of the country are generally rare for Stanford since the top collegiate water polo teams are concentrated on the West Coast.
In fact, no team from the East Coast has ever made it to the championship game of the NCAA Tournament, and in its only other game against an East Coast team this year, Stanford knocked off No. 16 Princeton in a 14-3 landslide.
With that said, playing five games in a weekend is sure to be grueling. The players seem up to the task, though.
“We have been grinding in practice the last couple of weeks, and I think everyone is in peak condition to play optimally this weekend,” Noll said.
Bucknell is the highest ranked among the four eastern teams at No. 15, but each team would love to spring a big upset to define their season.
One factor that will be an advantage for Stanford is the tremendous depth of this year’s squad. The Cardinal has routinely used a rotation of 12 or 13 players this year, and this weekend might be a chance to expand that even more.
“Assuming we take care of business early on in the game, it might be a good chance for other players to get some good playing time,” Noll said.
But Stanford is not letting itself look too far ahead into the weekend.
“We are concentrating on the first game in practice all week,” Noll said. “Because that is a conference game, but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”
The two key Stanford players to look at in that game will be freshman utility Alex Bowen and junior two-meter Forrest Watkins.
Bowen is the Cardinal’s leading scorer this season, and as if that was not enough for him to draw a lot of attention from the Tigers, he also scored five goals against them in their previous meeting.
Still, if you ask any of the players on this team, it is not their offense they have to worry about.
“The reason for our losses have been defensive breakdowns, not because of our offense,” said Noll.
Because of this, Watkins’ contributions may be even more important to the outcome of the game. He is Stanford’s top 2-meter defender, which means he will be pitted against Pacific’s All-American junior center Goran Tomasevic for most of the contest.
The Cardinal starts its weekend at Pacific on Friday at 3 p.m., then returns to the Bay Area to take on Bucknell and Harvard on Saturday. The weekend concludes with matches against Brown and Air Force on Sunday.