It’s great for east coast water polo!
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Interesting games at Brown this weekend. Brown now in a dogfight with D3 JHU. Reffing has been interesting both ways to say the least. 7-6 Brown at half.
Whether they win or not, Max Schlegel has done a great job turning around Johns Hopkins from some darker years around COVID. Their recruiting model has begun to adapt the Claremont approach of finding “role players” from high end high schools and clubs that want to attend a top academic school, and then pairing them with diamonds in the rough from lower tiers of CIF and non-California zones. If you look at Hopkins’ stats, a very high percentage of their goals come from Freshmen and Sophomores. They are likely to be competitive going forward.
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Anyone know of a way to watch Fordham and LBSU today? I know nothing on ESPN or Overnght, but maybe some team or parent Youtube or something?
It isn’t. Hoping to get some play by play feedback from people that are onsite.
Fordham is up 6-5 at the half on Long Beach.
10-9 Fordham going into the fourth.
Overtime in Beach-Fordham. 10-10.
UCI 11 Navy 10. Navy top 10? Beat LMU by one in overtime who beat UCSD at UCSD! UOP moves up. UCI 9, Navy 10. LMU 11 UCSD 12?
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Fordham survives at LBSU.
Huge win. The defense played well as the offense went dry for a long period of time. A couple of the late goals came when LB was trying to go 7 on 6. Final is 14-10.
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I’d have it
Big Four + Fordham.
6. I’d keep LBSU at 6 despite the loss to Pacific.
7. Pacific
8. UCSD
9. UCI
10. Princeton & SJSU tied
12. Navy
13. LMU
There comes a point in the season where it’s not all about H2H and more about a team’s overall resume. Pacific’s only quality win is LBSU. LBSU was likely in a lookahead spot due to the Fordham game and still has more quality wins and an impressive 5th place finish at the Invite.
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IMO no. Beating a team who beat another team is not relevant at all. Good job beating LMU, but it took them to the last second to beat an unranked Air Force. Sure rivalry. But still an unranked nail biter. Santa Clara is widely considered outside of the parity group. So beating an unranked team by 1, losing to UCI, and beating LMU doesn’t put you in top 10.
Santa Clara is a win that doesn’t move you up but a loss would move you down. Let’s not forget they almost lost to the Mount, trailing by 4 and got a 1 goal win. That shouldn’t happen to a top 10 team. Navy is good, but not ready to crown them that good. The hard part is if they win out rest of season other than Fordham games I would struggle putting them in top 10. They just don’t have the schedule. Not a west coast bias just not the test. They lost to #8 and #10. Hard fought wins against Mount St Marys and unranked Air Force. Beat #11 in OT. Beat a lower ranked team than them in Santa Clara. Thats not a top 10 resume.
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It’s a mess from 6 on for sure but I don’t know how they would be right behind they team they just beat with no relevant common opponents
Agreed but Navy should have everyone’s attention at this point. The two games (and likely a 3rd in the championships) against Fordham should be great. Too bad they put together such an easy schedule
Agree completely. I like Navy and no shade at them. They are tough. Just saying not top 10.
Navy wins 1 game and and has no top 10 wins and becomes top 10? while you ignore any adverse results as well as other teams with more difficult schedules.
Fairy Dust?
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It appears UCSB destroyed Airforce at 7300 feet. So there is that?
I agree with the previous replies—there’s a lot more parity from roughly 8–18 than the rankings sometimes suggest. I also think Santa Clara is certainly in that mix. They lost to UCSB by 2 and just took #8 UCI down to the final possession yesterday, 14-13.
And nothing away from Navy—they’re a very tough team and clearly making a case to move up. They probably need a couple more quality wins before the top-10 argument really sorts itself out, but they’re certainly knocking on that door. Their 13-10 win over SCU was another good W, but SCU was up 8-5 before Navy made a great second-half comeback—or SCU failed to finish, depending on how you want to look at it.
That’s really the point. Once you get into that 8–18 range, there’s a lot of parity. A 1–2 goal swing, a couple of possessions, exclusions or calls can decide these games on any given day. SCU still needs to prove they can finish against these teams consistently, but I don’t think they’re outside that group at all. And Navy is a couple more quality wins away from really cementing themselves in the top-10 discussion.
Part of it comes down to the eye test and how each team did against the Big Four.
Pacific - outside of the game against UCLA in a time of the season where multiple teams were keeping it close against UCLA and they were playing everyone - was not competitive against USC, Cal, or Stanford. All three games were over at halftime. LBSU on the other hand was in a one goal game against Stanford in the fourth.
Pacific also almost lost to Harvard, who is playing abysmal waterpolo right now and the only ranked win they have is LBSU. Meanwhile, LBSU has wins over Pepp, UCSB, SJST, and UCSD.
H2H is important but it’s not the “end all be all.”
Teams in the 6-18 range are going to take stabs at each other all season. There’s such little separation. On a good shooting night for Santa Clara, they could beat Pacific and other top 10 teams. So if we start overreacting to the result of H2H, the rankings will not be a good representation of where these teams are at.
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