Playing without their promising sophomore center Eszter Varro, Cal beat Michigan 23-18, Hawaii 14-9, and U.C. Irvine 16-9. Varro missed the games because she played for the Hungarian senior national team in an exhibition match against the United States. The United States won 12-11 in a shootout. USC’s Emily Ausmus and Rachel Gazzaniga each scored 2 goals for the United States. Cal will score a lot of goals this year. I think they are closer to being the 3rd best team in the country than the 5th.
A tough start for UCSB, losing to USC 17-5 and CBU 16-9. UCSB lists 9 true freshmen, 3 redshirt freshmen, and only 1 senior on its 22-person roster. I don’t remember seeing those kinds of numbers before.
I’ve heard, but haven’t confirmed, that John Tanner will continue coaching at Stanford beyond this year.
Watched UCSB play a lot last year. They were carried heavily by their seniors at key positions: Kuester (attacker), Clemons (center), and Donleavy (goalie). And say what you want about Serela, she knew water polo and could coach her teams up before being fired early last season.
They’ve been with their new coach all offseason and are very young. It will most likely be a tough growing season
A lot of the girls at UCSB, left the team, or quit the sport, the last couple years, and so last year, they were left with mostly seniors and freshmen. All those seniors are gone now and it’s a very young team. If they stick together, they can hopefully grow together and become what they once were, in a couple years.
Arizona hosting games this weekend and streaming all games; that’s great to see!
Hard to watch the Fresno State Polopalooza because of the fog, but that Indiana goalie is legit, she will def keep them in close games and help them win. That goal she made in the 2nd quarter on counter attack (when Fresno had their 1B goalie in) was a smart move and what an arm! You can watch the goal on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTvlLQXD6Hm/?img_index=1&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
On another note, LMU this weekend will be without Noa Sasover who will be playing for Israel at the European Championships and Carolina Magano who will be playing for Portugal, both starters for LMU.
Big week of water polo up North at the Brigitte Donner Daws Memorial Invitational, formerly known as the Cal Cup. Though the games between Stanford, UCLA an Cal are exhibitions, it will be interesting to see how they match up this early in the season.
Ryann Neushul has joined the staff at UCLA. Great pickup for the Bruins.
They usually do not stream any of the games. In fact, if I remember correctly, they do not even provide live stats for any of the games except for those that UCSD plays in.
Championship game - UCLA 12, USC 9. Great games by Lauren Steele and Tayor Smith. If the Cutino Award finalists were announced today, Smith would be one of them.
Watched some of the Triton Invite games this weekend and had some thoughts…
UCI vs Hawaii was a very good game that went to OT. They should have an epic battle for the Big West crown this season.
Impressed that UCLA won it all and looked sharp, even with Adam Wright not being the head coach this season. They are deep, have strong centers, and have great goal keeping.
Watched some of the ASU vs UCI game and was impressed with the ASU shooters. Looked up their roster and they have a good amount of euros this season that can snipe from the outside
Lastly, UCSB had a miserable weekend. Got crushed by UCI and then lost to Concordia, Fullerton, and Pomona-Pitzer. You can understand why they are down this year (new coach and very young team) but still they look many steps behind the competition. It’s been 10 years since they won the Big West with a senior class that Cathy Neushul recruited… and looks like that trend will continue for a while
yayareawp: I was able to watch the games on Saturday and today and I totally agree with your points.
The UCLA/USC game was not as close as the score indicates. I think that UCLA was up 8-2 at one point and it was never close. As usual with recent UCLA teams, Steele is tremendous in goal and center play is deep and is exceptional. I did not see Pearson score that many goals this weekend, but she totally dictates the flow of the game for them. What surprised me this weekend was their outside shooting. As mentioned by jeff, Smith was outstanding, but they had several other players pitch in as well.
USC was missing several players this weekend, so they will definitely be stronger down the road. Ausmus, Gazzaniga and Stryker are an exceptional core and I think that their missing players will put them on the same level as UCLA by the end of the season.
ASU is really good. They are 8-1 this year with their only loss to UCLA. I picked Quin for my team this year and she has not disappointed.
I knew that UCSB was going to go through some growing pains with a new coach and a young team, but their struggles this weekend surprised me.
The Kalbus tournament is going to be outstanding. Cal looks like they can score a ton of goals, so it will depend on if their defense can step up. I still think that everyone else is chasing Stanford at this point, but this tournament will give us our first good glimpse at how they all stack up against each other.
I believe UCSB had a few girls that were sick and didn’t even travel. They had 6 sick girls sick ther week before and 2 even went to ER. Some were able to still travel, but a few had to stay back. I would think that would make a difference.
Also, LMU was missing 2 starters still due to European Championship.
That was a really good win for Harvard over Indiana, especially given how well Indiana has started off the year. This is great for East Coast water polo.
I do wish that Harvard had a little more difficult non-conference schedule to see how they stack up against the other top teams. Besides UCLA towards the end of the year, they do not have another Top 10 opponent on their schedule.
I really enjoyed the Triton Invitational and I am really looking forward to the Barbara Kalbus games. I have not seen a schedule posted yet, but I assume all of the top teams will be there.
The official story there is with the NCAA season being shortened to two weeks, the UC powers that be did not want the consolation bracket hosted offsite (at CdM)
the rumor mill for years was that this tournament would be discontinued and judging from the bracket being cut in half doesn’t help beat the allegations
for having so many top schools they really should be streaming it or at least providing live stats.