SHUHEI MATSUO
Sports Editor
The Waves are on a roll.
After going 3-1 at the season-opening tournament in San Diego last week, the Pepperdine water polo team went 5-0 at this weekend’s Inland Empire Classic to improve to 8-1 for the season.
Last week, then No.-6 Pepperdine experienced its first loss of the season against then No.-7 UC Santa Barbara in San Diego. Six days later, the same match up was seen Saturday at the first game of the Inland Empire Classic in Redlands, Calif. This time the seventh-ranked Waves bounced back and sank the sixth-ranked Gauchos with an 11-9 victory.
“The difference between the first game and the second game [against Santa Barbara] is we executed better on our man-up opportunities this week,” Assistant Coach William Rodriguez said. “We also did a better job defensively.”
After getting the momentum back, Pepperdine added four more wins to conclude the weekend’s tournament undefeated.
Redshirt junior Adam Hewko, who scored three goals in Saturday’s match against Santa Barbara, said it was very important to bounce back and beat the Gauchos.
“If we lost to them again, that would have really hurt us,” he said.
The main difference in the team’s performance was that the players played more aggressively this time, Hewko added.
This close game was determined when senior Nick Corjon scored the team’s 10th goal during the fourth quarter.
Right before he made the shot, Pepperdine had a power play and Head Coach Jack Kocur called a timeout and told the team to pass the ball to Corjon since Santa Barbara players were pressing hard on Hewko, Corjon said.
“Jack knew what the other team was thinking: Those guys thought Hewko was going to shoot,” Corjon said. “He told us the play, and it turns out, I had an open shot and sealed the deal.”
Sophomore JP MacDonell, who scored four goals in this game, said it feels good to beat a team that Pepperdine was supposed to beat.
“You have like a relief that you bounced back from a tough loss that you shouldn’t have lost,” he said. “It’s good that we played them again because we are going to be using the same tools over and over, so it’s good to work on that stuff.”
MacDonell added three more goals for the weekend and led the team for a perfect 5-0 record at this tournament. He was also named Player of the Week by the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.
Even though the weekend’s highlight was beating Santa Barbara in the first of five games, beating lower-ranked teams – Whittier (score:15-3), Claremont (15-7), Cal Lutheran (14-7) and Cal Baptist (10-6) – was a confidence boost for the team, MacDonell said.
“Hopefully, [the weekend’s success] will boost our confidence and give us a little bit of a breath before we are going to a big tournament up north and play some of the top teams in the nation,” he added.
The Waves are back in action this weekend at the Northern California Tournament, hosted by UC Berkeley, and will face better-ranked teams.
Rodriguez said key to play well in this tournament is to keep executing.
“We’ll have to carry all the energy we had this past weekend to this weekend,” he said. “I guess [we’ll] try to finish at man-up opportunities. And that’s what it’s going to come down to.”
09-13-2007
