SHUHEI MATSUO
Sports Editor
The fifth-ranked Pepperdine men’s water polo team suffered a winless weekend in Northern California against two upper-ranked teams. Second-ranked University of California-Berkeley sank the Waves in its home waters 6-4 during Friday night’s game, while fourth-ranked Stanford Univeristy also defeated Pepperdine 11-7 on Sunday to snap its three-game losing streak.
With these two losses, Pepperdine dropped to 21-6 overall while its MPSF (Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) mark is 1-3.
Due to last week’s Malibu fire, Pepperdine’s home game against California was rescheduled to Friday at Berkley. Despite losing their home-pool advantage, the Waves fought hard against the nation’s second-best team but came short at the end. Head Coach Jack Kocur said he is pleased with how the team performed against the Golden Bears.
“I think on Friday night, we came with a lot of energy, we came with a lot of heart and passion,” he said. “I think they ended up winning the game on the scoreboard, but I thought we won the game in the water.”
Redshirt junior Adam Hewko also said he is pleased with the team’s play against Cal, but not with Sunday’s match versus Stanford.
“We had a good game against Cal. It’s a hard place to play, but it was good for us to go up there and play them because we have to play the Mountain Pacific at Cal,” said Hewko, who delivered the team-high two goals Friday. “Stanford game, we didn’t do as well as we should have. And we lost.”
During Sunday’s match, host Stanford (10-6, 2-3) mounted an aggressive offense from the beginning of the game. Led by Drac Wigo, who posted a hat trick in this match, the Cardinal earned a three-goal lead to end the half 6-3. Pepperdine freshman Caleb Hamilton also led the Waves with a hat trick, but the team came up short and ended up losing by four.
While Pepperdine has failed to upset better-ranked teams since Sept. 16 (against UC Irvine), No.-3 UCLA snapped University of Southern California’s perfect record Sunday when the host Bruins defeated the top-ranked Trojans with a 9-5 decision. Despite USC’s domination earlier in the season, Kocur did not seem surprised by the news.
“Anybody can beat anybody this year,” he said. “All top-8, 9 or 10 teams are capable of getting a win out of anything and anybody this year.”
Pepperdine is back in action Saturday when it welcomes No-.7 Long Beach State, a team that upset Stanford on Oct. 21, but also lost in Sunday’s match against No.-13 Pacific, a team Pepperdine defeated Oct. 20.
The Waves played the 49ers in the SoCal tournament Oct. 14 and came out with a close 9-8 victory despite a huge lead after the first half. Hewko said the team needs to take the lower-ranked teams more seriously this time.
Kocur feels the same way.
“[The Long Beach State 49ers] are almost on the same boat as us for their up-and-down weeks,” he said. “Hopefully we just come out and play our game. We can’t really control what they do, but we can kind of control what we do.”
The Waves host Long Beach State on Saturday at noon and face California Baptist at 2.p.m., in Malibu.
11-01-2007
