Pepperdine topples two top-10 teams and pushes its record to 3-0 after winning San Diego Invitational
GARRETT WAIT
Sports Editor
The sixth-ranked Pepperdine water polo team got off to a hot start at the UCSD Triton Invitational over Labor Day weekend as the Waves swept their three matches to take the tournament title.
Pepperdine opened with a 12-3 blowout victory against No.-19 Air Force Academy as sophomore Adam Hewko led the Waves with five goals and fellow sophomore Grant Miller added two more. Redshirt senior Jesse Smith, seeing his first action in the pool in more than a year, also scored two goals against Air Force.
Smith’s return was one of the major subplots this season and Head Coach Terry Schroeder gave the senior rave reviews after his first college action in more than a year.
“I think Jesse provided really good leadership for us,” Schroeder said. “He’s definitely going to have a different role on this team than he had on the national team. It might take him a little while to find that role, you know being more involved on offense. But having him back in the pool is very intimidating to our opponents. I’d say he did a great job for us offensively and defensively. It’s nice to have him back out there playing with us.”
The Waves kept the scoring onslaught going when they faced local rival Loyola Marymount University in the first game Sunday. Pepperdine beat the Lions 10-4, as eight Waves scored against their overmatched rivals. Miller and freshman Taylor Watson both found the net twice.
In the title match, Pepperdine squared off against University of California San Diego, the host school for the tournament. Pepperdine again scored in double digits, winning the game 11-8 over the eighth-ranked Tritons. Hewko again led the Waves, notching six more goals to bring his weekend total to 12.
Schroeder said Hewko’s outburst is something to expect with Smith drawing constant double teams from opponents afraid of the Olympian.
“Adam certainly is one of our prime offensive players,” Schroeder said. “You know having Jesse in the water is going to open up a lot of things for a lot of different guys. They’ll have games where they score two, three or four goals. It’ll give us a lot of opportunities to create because teams are going to try to double team Jesse.”
Smith finished his first tournament after a year off by tallying five goals in three games, good for second on the team.
Schroeder said the whole team gave a tremendous effort, especially on the defensive side, in sweeping through the tournament over the weekend.
“That was definitely a good starting point,” Schroeder said. “We talked last week about how important defense was, and I think overall our defense did a respectable job and it was a good starting point. The team came together and got better each game.”
The Waves open their home schedule with a rematch against LMU on Saturday at Raleigh Runnels Memorial Pool. Schroeder said the team could learn to be consistent from this immediate rematch against their rivals.
“I think that’s a lesson for this team to realize is that each day’s a new day,” Schroeder said. “Any given day, we can beat anybody and we can lose to anybody. It’s important for us to prepare all week and get our guys mentally ready to play. We’ll be reminding them of that every week. LMU has given us some trouble in the past few years but I think we’ll be fired up to play a great game.”
09-08-2005
