A chance to make a statement went by the wayside for the No. 9-ranked Long Beach State men’s water polo team as an early lead evaporated on the 49ers in their 10-6 loss to No. 5 UC Santa Barbara on Saturday at the 49er Aquatics Center.
For the players, it was a missed opportunity to post a quality win against a top-5 program, particularly at home.
“It was a game we felt we definitely should have won,” sophomore Dan Matulis said of his team’s expectations coming into the game.
The 49ers (13-6, 0-3 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) received single goals from six players — the first two coming from Nathan McConnell and Milos Vrzic — to spark The Beach to a 2-0 lead.
That advantage got away quickly from the 49ers after Vrzic was ejected from the game midway through the first period. The ejection did not appear to draw the ire of the 49ers’ bench, but tempers soon flared.
Assistant coach Kyle Gorham was tossed from the game for his objections to a no-call on a play that resulted in Matulis failing to get a shot off on a great scoring opportunity in front of the cage.
Head coach Gavin Arroyo said that his team had a tough time rebounding from the loss of Vrzic.
“Losing our best player in the first quarter did not help [our chances],” Arroyo said.
The Gauchos (12-6, 1-1 MPSF) made a shortened 49ers’ bench pay, scoring six unanswered goals to make the early LBSU lead a distant memory.
“We can’t let teams come back like Santa Barbara did by making mental errors,” Nick Rascon said, issuing a challenge to his teammates to come up with the stops necessary to win big games.
LBSU could not erase the first half deficit. Gauchos’ goalkeeper Myles Christian allowed just one goal in the third quarter, enabling UCSB to extend its lead to 8-3. Christian stopped 11 shots in the game.
The Gauchos were more than willing to keep The Beach to the outside with their keeper stopping anything outside of five meters. Long Beach struggled to find the back of the net as it hit a plethora of goalposts in their match.
The 49ers’ struggles on offense could not have been demonstrated better than by a sequence of plays on the power play in the third quarter. LBSU needed four shots on a 6-on-5 possession before Hayden Leach beat the Gauchos keeper with two seconds left on the penalty clock.
“I think we feel like we have to make plays happen when we struggle offensively,” Matulis said. “We just need to relax.”
The 49ers will hit the road to face Pepperdine in a MPSF matchup Saturday. Game time is set for noon.
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