Abigail Kapur
No. 13 UC San Diego men’s water polo (7-4, 0-0 Big West) fell 15-4 to No. 4 Stanford (5-0, 0-0 MPSF) on Sunday, Sept. 14, at Canyonview Aquatic Center. The Tritons put up 24 shot attempts to Stanford’s 27 but were ultimately denied on all but four by the Cardinal defense. The 15-4 loss marks UCSD’s 10th consecutive defeat against the Cardinal.
Stanford opened the scoring on the first possession, delivering a shot to the right corner of the net. The Tritons managed to respond soon after, as senior attacker Lucas Romaguera scored on a penalty shot to put UCSD on the board. But Stanford was just picking up its momentum, and the Tritons found themselves down 5-2 at the end of the first quarter.
The second period saw the Tritons’ trickle of goals dry up altogether. In eight minutes, Stanford shut out UCSD and put up three more goals. Down by 6 at the break, the Tritons’ struggles continued in the third.
Stanford scored on the first possession of the third quarter, foiling the Triton defense. Tensions ran high toward the end of the period, with each team taking a penalty shot and UCSD head coach Matt Ustaszewski receiving a yellow card. After its penalty goal, Stanford scored again on the power play with less than two minutes on the clock, increasing the Cardinal’s lead to 13-3. Triton sophomore utility player Lachlan Rossi scored from the center to bring the tally to 13-4 by the end of the third quarter.
“Our power play in that quarter, especially, really struggled,” Ustaszewski said in a postgame interview with The UCSD Guardian. “We’re struggling to share the ball. We’re struggling to find the open spaces. It was their defensive pressure that kept us off the score sheet in the quarter, and it put us on our heels a little bit.”
The Cardinal’s powerful defense kept Triton senior utility player Eamon Hennessey scoreless, breaking his 10-game goal streak. With 20 seconds left, freshman attacker Jackson Boettner took one last shot, which came up short of the goal. The Tritons went scoreless in the fourth period.
“We knew what kind of opponent we were having come down here,” Ustaszewski said. “There’s some good that we’ll take away, and there’s obviously a lot of learning moments for us, but that was the expectation coming in this game: to play in one of the top teams in the country and see where we’re at and use it as a barometer for us moving forward.”
Earlier this week, the Tritons defeated Concordia and then swiftly crushed Chapman 26-7 in their highest-scoring match in the past 13 years. They will hit the road again for a rematch at Concordia on Sept. 18. UCSD will return to Canyonview on Sept. 24 for the highly-anticipated Battle of the Kings game against No. 14 Loyola Marymount.