After a tough outing at the Princeton Invitational, the men’s water polo team heads up to Harvard for the ECAC championship this weekend. These games will show how well the Tigers stack up against East Coast competition and how good their chance of winning the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s (CWPA) Eastern Division is. This weekend’s opponents, No. 12 St. Francis and either No. 18 Brown or Bucknell, are all conference foes. While the official conference season has not started yet, these games will be a good benchmark for Princeton’s chances.“We’ll get a good taste for how good the other teams are on the East Coast,” senior utility Alex Edmunds said. “[These East Coast teams] are the most important thing determining how well we’ll do [in the CWPA East].” The Tigers (1-3 overall) come into this weekend’s games having played four of the best teams in the country last weekend, with their only win coming against Brown (4-4). Two matches were decided by two goals or fewer and could easily have gone the other way. Particularly painful were Princeton’s 11-9 loss to No. 9 UCSD and its 9-11 loss to No. 15 Santa Clara. The Tigers were in both games until the end, with the latter being decided on a Broncos goal that came with 19 seconds left in regulation.“We could have won those games if we had executed better,” said junior utility Eric Vreeland, who had six goals during last weekend’s games. Along with junior utility Mark Zalewski, Vreeland is currently tied for the team scoring lead.“If that happened in a month, those games go our way,” Edmunds added. Against Stanford (5-0), however, Princeton was simply outclassed, as the third-ranked team was dominant in all areas of the game. The Tigers ended their weekend with a win against conference rival Brown, giving them a confidence boost going into this weekend.“It was awesome to end on a high note with a win,” Vreeland said.In its first game this weekend, Princeton faces off against St. Francis (3-2) and hopes to build on that confidence. The Terriers won this tournament last year, however, and defeated the Tigers en route to their fourth-straight championship. If Princeton wants to win the ECAC championship this season, that path goes straight through St. Francis’ tough squad. The Tigers are seeded eighth to the Terriers’ top seed, based on their finish at last year’s Eastern Championships, and will open the tournament at 9 a.m. Saturday. “St. Francis is a very strong opponent,” Vreeland said. “[They] have given us trouble in the past. They have one of the better goalkeepers on the East Coast. It should give us something we haven’t seen before.”The Terriers are led by goalie Nikola Djuric and utility Nemanja Pucarevic. Djuric was named the Northern Division Player of the Week on Sept. 8 following his excellent performance at the Navy Open, where Djuric had 25 saves over four games. Pucarevic scored four goals against Iona and five against George Washington to lead a high-powered St. Francis offense.Part of the reason for the Terriers’ success in recent years, including an appearance in the final four of the 2005 NCAA tournament, is their recruiting strategy. Players, mostly from Serbia and Hungary, are recruited sight unseen from Eastern Europe. Water polo is very popular there, and these players are eager to come to America for a good education.To win against St. Francis, the Tigers need to focus on executing their offense and cutting down on defensive mistakes to avoid giving away free goals.“Team defense is one of our weaknesses,” Vreeland admitted. “We also need to work on communication.”In game two, the Tigers will either face Brown or Bucknell depending on the result of their first game and the winner of the Brown-Bucknell game. Princeton has already defeated the Bears once this season, last Sunday. Bucknell is led by utility Richie Hyden, who already has 25 goals and 15 assists this season. Either way, the second game will not be easy, though it will be easier than the first. The Tigers’ final opponent of the weekend is unknown, as it depends on who wins and loses in the first two rounds of the tournament.
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