It’s time for our annual men’s college draft. The objective of the draft is for participants to select the best teams they can, while recognizing some of the top college players. Each participant must select a coach, a goalie, a center, a center defender, and four other field-position players. The coach must be an active head coach of a men’s college, junior college, or high school team. To be eligible as a player, an individual must be on the roster of a four-year American college team. For our participants, when you make your final selection, please note which school you think will win the NCAA championship, which school will do better than expected, which players will be Cutino Award finalists, which player will win the Cutino Award, which player will be named the MPSF newcomer of the year, and which coach will be named the ACWPC coach of the year.
Here is the draft order for the odd rounds of our draft:
rolled1
Trevor
Rb
sbwp
retiredguy
Oldschoolpolofan
H20polo10
Jeff
The order will be reversed in the even rounds of the draft.
rolled1 is on the clock with the first pick of the 2025 draft, followed by Trevor and Rb.
Note: Look for an announcement from Clark next week introducing the first online water polo fantasy league. The fantasy league will focus on the performance of college teams, not on the performance of individual players.
Provenziani was a first-team All-American last season scoring 93 goals and dishing out 67 assists while forming what might be the most devastating 1-2 side in college water polo with Andras Toth. I watched him all year long though and his impact goes beyond those numbers. Provenziani is one of those guys that always makes the correct water polo decision. His shot placement is flawless. Incredibly fast on the counter, he forces guys to play less offense as they are scared of being beat back.
Also, you should all know this is a completely and totally unbiased pick. Just go ahead and disregard that I played for Fordham, can generally be spotted walking around the Upper East Side in one of about twelve Fordham water polo shirts, checked the schedule the moment it came out to make sure the Princeton game didn’t overlap with any of my daughter’s swim meets AND started a recent conversation with my wife that went “hypothetically, if we were to frame the Wall Street Journal article where would it go”. In a completely objective way, I very carefully reviewed Mihailo Vukazic, Chase Dodd, Bernardo Herzer and my robust analytical models led me to bravely pulling the lever for Luca.
I don’t much about Krstic other than his SC bio and some input posted in other threads here. So a bit of a gamble here. But too hard to pass up considering the upside.
Brendon Gyapjas - goalie, San Jose State. Don’t take my word for it. Kirk Everist raves about Gyapjas. No telling what he could do if he played for a top 5 team.
Ben Liechty - 6’4" LH attacker, UCLA. Let’s hope DU recognizes that we need a LH attacker on the 2028 Olympic team. If so, Liechty should be the pick. Liechty was the CIF Southern Section Open Division Player of the Year in 2022. He was second in total points (goals and assists) on UCLA’s 2024 team and fourth in 2023. He played a key role on the U.S. team that won the silver medal in this summer’s U20 World Championships.
H20polo10 is on the clock, followed by Oldschoolpolofan and retiredguy.
Before I get started, let me just say that I thought Navy should have been ranked substantially higher than 20 in the preseason poll. That is a good team that is going to win a lot of games this fall and they are led by Black who is exceptional. You speak with guys who have played against him and all you hear is admiration. The first thing that comes up is not his shooting but his incredible vision. A two-time All-American he scored 94 goals last season and had 77 assists. What makes these numbers really impressive is he is always highlighted first on the scouting report of whoever is playing Navy. Teams go out of their way to get the ball out of his hands and he still put up ridiculous numbers.
Really thought he was a tank at Junior Worlds and is primed to have a huge sophomore season at Stanford. I believe he is a featured guy this fall and will draw an absurd amount of exclusions. Scored 22 goals en route to being All-MPSF as a freshman.
I think I am getting great value at this pick. With Luca and Kiefer flanking him on the outside, my team is going to score goals.