SHUHEI MATSUO
Assistant Sports Editor
After taking seventh place at the 13-team SoCal Tournament a week and a half ago, the Pepperdine water polo team came back to Malibu and played against No.-4 Stanford on Saturday for the second time in six days. Although the Waves came closer to the Cardinal this time, eleventh-ranked Pepperdine, again, fell to Stanford 8-6 for its Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) opener. With this loss, the Waves dropped their season record to 10-12.
Stanford built an early lead with four goals — two by Michael Bury — in the first quarter. Pepperdine cut the deficit to two, 4-2, when freshman Brett Auer scored his 20th goal of the season early in the second period. However, goals by Tyler Drake and Ryan McCarthy would push the visitor’s lead to four, 6-2, at the half.
The Waves’ offense picked up the pace after the half as freshman Clayton Snyder recorded two goals and senior Matt Welde scored his second of the day to reduce the gap to 7-5 heading into the final eight minutes of the match.
However, Will Hindle-Katel quickly pushed the Cardinal back up by three, 8-5, with Stanford’s second 6-on-5 of the afternoon with seven minutes remaining. Senior Jason Langten kept the Waves’ comeback hopes alive when he scored at the 2:51 mark, but that ended up being the final goal of the game.
The Cardinal may be better than the Waves after defeating them twice this season. But Snyder said Pepperdine has potential to beat upper-ranked Stanford.
“I believe that we have the ability to crush teams like Stanford,” he said. “We are faster, stronger and bigger — we have all the components that we would need.”
Physically, water polo may be the toughest sport. However, it’s not always about physical components in the game.
“It’s coming down to, I suppose, the mental game, in which a team like Stanford would be like ‘Hey, we are Stanford. You can’t beat us,’” Snyder said.
Asked if confidence is the most important element in this game, Snyder said “perhaps,” but he also said he can’t get inside of his teammates’ heads and control how they should think to have confidence. The good thing, he added, is that he feels that they are all on the same page as far as their playing styles.
While Pepperdine had its first MPSF game Saturday, the 2006 campaign is more than halfway done. With the winning average below .500, the team’s main goal for the rest of the season is still to place Top 5.
“We can really gain a lot of momentum from the games coming up,” Snyder said. “All season, it all comes down to right now, so we’ll get a good seed in the MPSF tournament.”
The Waves will next be on duty Saturday at noon, when they travel to Cal Berkeley to take on the Bears.
10-26-2006
