Men's Water Polo: Easterns way to Final Four

“The ultimate goal is to win Easterns and make it to the Final Four,” junior utility Eric Vreeland said.

The 2004 team defeated St. Francis in the Eastern Championships by scoring in the second sudden-death overtime period and became only the second team in Princeton history to advance to the Final Four. The win at Easterns was the 2004 Tigers’ last, as they fell to UCLA in the semifinals, 7-5, and lost again in the third-place game to Loyola Marymount, 6-5. With a record of 25-6 in their campaign that year, the 2004 team still holds the school record for most wins in a season.

This year’s team is now attempting to one-up that legendary 2004 squad. While the Tigers may have taken a while to play well as a team, toward the end of the season they became a cohesive unit.

“Early on we struggled to come together,” head coach Luis Nicolao said. “But as the season’s progressed we’ve really come together. We’ve gelled well.”

The Tigers’ first game in the tournament is today at 11 a.m. against MIT (9-14), a squad that took fourth place at the Northern Championships. The Tigers cannot afford to let their guard down one bit, even though they are the higher seed. The Engineers are led by senior guard Mike Smith-Bronstein, who leads the team with 43 intercollegiate goals this season and had a key defensive steal in the Northerns opening-round game against Harvard. In goal, MIT will start freshman Columbus Leonard, who has 158 saves this year against collegiate competition. The Princeton squad must be wary of underestimating the Engineers.

“[MIT is] a really scrappy, competitive and tough team,” Nicolao said. “In this tournament, every game could be your last game. Every team’s out there giving it all they’ve got. We need to do what we do well.”

The Tigers do have the benefit of being the top seed in the Southern Division. Their side of the bracket consists of MIT, Brown and Johns Hopkins. While Princeton has not yet played the Engineers this year, it has defeated the Bears and the Blue Jays twice apiece. The other side of the bracket is much tougher, consisting of St. Francis, Navy, Bucknell and Iona. St. Francis and Navy are two of Princeton’s long-time rivals, and it will benefit the Tigers if they make the finals that they cannot square off with either team until the championship game. Princeton is 2-1 against Navy this year but lost 11-5 to St. Francis when the two played on Sept. 20.

“We don’t like to look past anyone,” Vreeland said. “We have to come focused [today] against MIT and on Saturday against whoever we face.”

Princeton has gone 9-2 since a mid-October trip to California, where it went 2-2 against the nation’s top competition, and is currently playing some of its best water polo of the year. The players have used the two weeks off since Southerns for conditioning and practice, but they have taken care not to wear themselves out.

“We’ve been taking it a little easier in practice and giving ourselves a little more recovery time,” Vreeland said. “Everyone’s feeling pretty good.”

Whatever the outcome of the games this weekend, the Tigers can take solace in the fact that this season has been the most successful since 2004. They hope to keep this run alive for one more road trip to Stanford and the Final Four on Dec. 6 and 7.

“No matter what happens this weekend it will definitely have been a successful season,” Vreeland said. “If we do win Eastern Championships, it will have been one of the best seasons in Princeton water polo history. Obviously if we can do that and be part of that history, it would be amazing.”