It’s not often when a select few teams truly dominate a sport as much as they do in water polo.
The four horsemen of the Stanford Cardinal, California Golden Bears, UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans have won every single NCAA championship since 1997, and all but five since the tournament began in 1969. This year, Cal was looking for a three-peat and its 18th title, however the program was not given a playoff selection after a 1-5 conference record and 12-13 overall record.
The bracket shaped out so that UCLA and Stanford — given each won their first round game — would have to fight through each other in order to make it to the championship, while USC was said to have the easier route, despite not playing an easy two games by any stretch. The bracket played out basically as expected: UCLA stormed through Salem and found a win against Stanford, while USC had a close match with Cal Baptist and an overtime thriller against Fordham – who was looking to make history as the first team to make the finals outside of California.
The stage was set for a fifth rematch between the two teams. The Bruins were leading the season series 3-1, but lost in the MPSF Finals to the Trojans who, in doing so, clinched their way to a 20th straight NCAA Tournament appearance.
In that game, we found out the age-old saying that defense wins championships certainly rings true, as the Bruins took home their 13th NCAA Water Polo Championship in an 11-8 victory.
Going into the match, it was known that both sides had the firepower to score a lot of goals. USC had Long Beach State transfer sophomore driver Robert López Duart, fifth-year 2-meter Max Miller, fifth-year driver Carson Kranz and junior utility Andrej Grgurevic. UCLA had Olympic bronze medalist brothers Chase and Ryder Dodd, graduate 2-meter Nico Tierney and graduate attacker Makoto Kenney.
But it truly was the goalies that stood out in the match. Coming off an 18 save outing in the round prior against Fordham, redshirt sophomore Bernardo Herzer continued his impressive postseason performance going with nine saves against what is likely the top offense in the country. On the other side, redshirt freshman Nate Tauscher finished with 10 saves and truly was the reason that the Bruins came out on top with the trophy.
It was a physical battle in the post the entire time, with the Trojans electing to go with two bigs since sophomore utility Stefan Brankovic would not be playing due to his flagrant misconduct the game prior. The strategy would hurt the Trojans in the end, with the lack of space in the hole making it hard for Miller to get anything going offensively — something that the team has relied on a huge amount this season.
They did work very well on the man-advantage, cashing in on their first four of six including goals from López Duart, Grgurevic, fifth-year driver Tom McGuire — his ninth goal and second against the Bruins this year — and Miller, his only goal this game.
Going into halftime, the Trojans seemed to be in a good place tied 4-4, with the Dodd brothers only scoring two goals combined. They were clicking on the power play, stopping UCLA all six times when they were a man down.
Things slowly slid downhill, though. The Dodds each found another goal, and the Trojans went cold on their man up opportunities, while the Bruins started to find the back of the cage on theirs, scoring on four out of their next six chances.
With the Bruins scoring the opening goal of the fourth to go up two, the job for the Trojans seemed to get much more difficult with time running out quickly. After back-to-back goals from UCLA, it was only a matter of time before the Bruins all jumped in for a pool party celebration.
Now that all is said and done for the Trojans, there were many players that had notable seasons ending in an MPSF Championship and NCAA Tournament second place finish. Miller scored in 27 of the team’s 29 games and finished his career with 147 goals, which puts him at No. 16 all-time at USC. His partner-in-crime and co-captain Kranz had a great year as well, capping off his career with 133 goals, No. 24 all-time at USC. López Duart finished with 20 multi-goal games and had 64 goals on the season, which makes him one of 14 Trojans to ever break the 60 mark in a season.
It was a tough loss, no doubt. However, the Trojans will have all the motivation in the world to come back next season to chase their 11th NCAA Championship and first since 2018.