SHUHEI MATSUO
Assistant Sports Editor
With a record of 1-3, the Pepperdine water polo team struggled this past weekend, finishing 12th at the 15-team NorCal Tournament in Stanford, Calif.
The eighth-ranked Pepperdine played against No.-6 UC Davis for Saturday’s first match but was unable to advance to the winners’ bracket after losing a close game 10-9. However, the Waves rebounded at night after defeating Princeton 14-8 for Saturday’s second game.
The Waves could not hold the momentum the next day, losing two Sunday matches against UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine 13-6 and 10-8 respectively.
Pepperdine played against four UC schools this month and lost to all of them. Other UC schools Berkley and Los Angeles have even higher rankings with 2nd and 3rd, respectively.
Looking back at the rough weekend in Northern California, junior attacker Nick Corjon said losing the first match against UC Davis was the biggest turning point.
“Since they were ranked above us as of last week, we prepared for them a little bit, you know,” he said. “Our first objective was to beat them and move on to the winners’ bracket.”
The Waves took an early lead but fell short at the end.
“After that, it went kind of downhill,” Corjon said.
Going 1-3 this past weekend, Pepperdine’s overall season record became 4-5. Four of the five losses are from the past two weeks. The Waves led all nine games after either the first or second period. Corjon describes this phenomenon as the team’s new pattern.
“We have like a pattern where we are up in the first quarter — we are beating the teams by like a couple of goals — and then during the second and the third quarters, they come back, and we have to come back in the fourth quarter,” he said.
The Waves had a lead at least once in all nine games that they played this season but ended up losing more than half of them. Maybe their next strategy should focus on how they play during the last two quarters.
After taking this week off from competition, Pepperdine will travel and face the nation’s best USC on Saturday, Sept. 30. The last season’s NCAA champions are looking solid this year as well after capturing the NorCal tournament title this past weekend.
“They are looking good and really strong right now,” Corjon said. “We are going to have to prepare for them, but we got two weeks to prepare so we should be pretty good.”
09-21-2006
