SHUHEI MATSUO
Sports Editor
The Trojans forgot how to sink especially in their home waters.
The nation’s No.-1 water polo team, University of Southern California, kept its perfect record for the season and the winning streak in its home pool (23) when it dominated No.-5 Pepperdine with a score of 10-4 on Saturday.
With this loss, the Waves dropped their record to 11-3, while USC improved to 6-0 for the 2007 campaign.
Although the final score makes the game seem like a blowout by USC, the Waves shut the Trojans’ offense during the second quarter and tied the No.-1 squad in the country with 3-3 after the first half.
Pepperdine players fought hard in the third quarter, chasing USC with only one goal with eight seconds remaining in the quarter, but lost their spirits when the Trojans scored a goal to make it 6-4 with only one more quarter to go.
USC added four more goals in the final quarter and shut down the Pepperdine’s offense.
“If we were to score the first goal in the fourth quarter, we could have gotten some momentum,” Head Coach Jack Kocur said. “But things didn’t work out that way because they ended up scoring the first goal. And that really defeated us at the moment. We were just done emotionally and physically.”
Sophomore goalie Travis Stachowski, who had 13 saves Saturday, said experience was the difference between USC and Pepperdine in Saturday’s game.
“USC proved that they were the more-experienced team, being in that kind of situation,” Stachowski said. “It was a new experience for us, but we learned.”
Even though the Trojans showed the dominating power by going 7-1 in the second half, Pepperdine is capable of taking down USC later this season, Kocur said.
“We prove that [USC is beatable] in the first half, and we still didn’t play to our potential in the first half,” he said. “I think the next time we play, we’ll definitely give them a one-goal game.”
Echoing his coach, Stachowski also said USC is “very beatable.”
“Every top-6 team is beatable by another top-6 team this year,” he added.
This Saturday, the Waves will face cross-town rival Loyola Marymont for their home opener at 12 p.m., followed by a 4:30 p.m. game against Golden West College.
It is important to win every game, but the team has special feelings about the home-opening match, Stachowski said.
“This game will especially be important because it’s in front of our home crowd,” he said. “We want to show our fans what we can do.”
Kocur also said it is essential to win Saturday’s game at home, but just winning isn’t enough.
“I think coming off of a loss like we did against USC going into LMU,” he said, “we need to not only just beat this team, but we need to beat them by four or five goals and prove to ourselves that we are competitive and we can compete.”
09-27-2007