The members of the men's water polo team did themselves proud during their sole trip of the season to a state that two-thirds of the team call home: California.
The No. 15 Tigers finished 13th in the NorCal Tournament at Stanford, losing two games Saturday, but coming back with two wins on Sunday. Princeton also won an exhibition game Friday, bringing its overall record to 7-3.
The Tigers managed to put up a mere two goals in its first game against No. 3 UCLA on Saturday, losing 15-2. UCLA took an early lead in that game, going up 4-1 after the first period.
Sophomore utility Alex Edmunds netted the Tigers' lone goal of the first half with a score in the first quarter. Princeton was shut out for the next two periods until junior utility Zach Beckmann found the back of the net in the fourth to give the Tigers their second goal.
Junior goalie Scott Syverson made five saves in goal.
"UCLA is the third-ranked team in the nation," Senior captain center Nicholas Seaver said. "They're incredibly fast and incredibly conditioned, and we weren't conditioned enough at this point in the season to meet them."
The Tigers were not yet through with top-10 competition, though, as they faced No. 8 Pepperdine later in the day. Despite being within two goals at the end of the third, Princeton fell to the Waves by a score of 14-8. The Tigers stayed close most of the match, behind 6-5 at the half and 10-8 going into the final quarter, but Pepperdine shut out the Tigers in the fourth and added four goals of their own to pull away for the win.
Senior captain utility Reid Joseph was the leading scorer with three goals, and Seaver added another two. Syverson made four saves in goal.
"I don't think we were mentally prepared to play UCLA, but we showed a little more of our potential in the Pepperdine game," Joseph said. "Overall, it was great practice to play some well trained teams. We need to get smarter and get better at playing a more cohesive game of water polo."
Seaver agreed, "We were prepared for Pepperdine and had the potential to beat them, but we didn't bring our best game out to meet them. We had some mental breakdowns early in the game — the team is still working out kinks in its offense and defense, and sometimes we make mistakes in trying to implement our coach's offense. We're working through it, and these mistakes will go away as the season progresses."
Princeton came back on Sunday with its head still held high, knocking off UC Santa Clara 10-8 and UC Santa Cruz 14-6. The Tigers also played UC Santa Cruz in an exhibition match on Friday, defeating them 11-5.
Sophomore utility Eric Vreeland was the leading scorer in both games against UC Santa Cruz, scoring three goals in the exhibition game and five in the tournament game. Syverson split time in goal during the tournament game with freshman goalie Scottie Hvidt, making five saves in the first half while Hvidt made 10 in the second.
Against Santa Clara, Seaver led the Tigers with four goals. Vreeland added another three, and Syverson made 10 saves in goal.
"We expected to beat Santa Clara and Santa Cruz," Seaver said. "Still, any team can come out and beat you on any day so we focused hard on those games so as not to have any letdowns. We executed our offense a lot better on Sunday than we did on Saturday."
"Overall I was happy with the weekend," head coach Luis Nicolao said. "We were able to get some games in against tough competition. I think we all have a better idea of what we need to work on. This past weekend of games should give us plenty to concentrate on the next few weeks. We still need to get into better shape and work on finishing our shots. We could have had a different outcome against Pepperdine if we had only converted a few more shots into goals. Overall it was a productive weekend."
The Tigers will travel to Providence, R.I., next weekend for their first Ivy League game against Harvard.
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