With 1:05 left in Friday’s Crosstown Showdown between the USC and UCLA men’s water polo teams, the Trojans could almost taste victory. Following a goal from redshirt senior Jake Ehrhardt, which gave the No. 3 Trojans a 13-10 lead, the senior night energy from the UCLA side of Spieker Aquatics Center was zapped.
The Trojans should have come away with their 16th win of the season. They should have prevailed over a No. 2 ranked Bruins team who had bested them in their first two meetings this year. They should have been able to go into next week’s MPSF tournament with momentum.
Then, Gianpiero Di Martire struck. The Bruins’ redshirt sophomore attacker (brother of USC’s own graduate driver Massimo Di Martire) stuck a knife in the Trojans’ hopes of coming out of regulation with a win. He rattled off three straight goals in the last minute of the fourth quarter to send the game into overtime.
USC played great water polo for the first 30:55 of the game. USC’s Di Martire continued his torrid scoring campaign, adding another four goals to his resume. Ehrhardt, redshirt sophomore utility Joshua Waldoch and redshirt senior driver Ashworth Molthen each contributed two goals.
On the defensive side, the Trojans struggled to limit exclusions. However, they limited the Bruins to three goals on 10 tries when they had the man advantage. USC’s defense in general was fairly strong during that time frame.
Yet every single one of those positive aspects of the game were rendered null when UCLA’s Di Martire rattled off three straight goals. From then on, all that mattered for USC was securing the win in overtime.
The Trojans were unable to claim that victory. Graduate attacker Jake Cavano gave UCLA the lead with three seconds left in overtime. It proved to be the only score from either team during the overtime period.
UCLA’s strong performance factored into the Trojans’ defeat, but USC still believed the game was incredibly winnable.
“100 percent,” freshman utility Andrej Grgurevic said when asked if he thought USC was the better team in the pool. “We were playing a really good game. We had a few defensive slip-ups that gave them a few goals … it’s a tough loss. Hard to even explain it. We just need to finish harder.”
As defeating as the loss was, the loss doesn’t dissuade head coach Marko Pintaric from having lofty, long-term goals for this team heading into the MPSF tournament next weekend.
“We really belong in that championship tournament,” Pinatric said. “We’re gonna play hard with a chip on our shoulders, especially right now after this type of game. We want to win the tournament, that’s our goal.”
USC has the ability to compete for a national championship, and there is still a strong possibility that they will do just that. But first, the Trojans will likely need to exorcise their demons and defeat this UCLA team in next weekend’s tournament.
“It’s just a few slip-ups in defense that we really need to fix as a team and I feel like we’ll be in a very strong position next week,” Grgurevic said.
USC will face Austin College Friday at 2:45 p.m. at the Uytengsu Aquatics Center in the first round of the MPSF tournament.