On a cold and rainy night at the Ken Lindgren Aquatics Center, the No. 12 ranked Long Beach State women’s water polo picked up their third win in a row behind a masterful defensive performance, allowing a season-low three goals in the contest.
The Beach fans in attendance, who bundled in heavy jackets and sheltered under umbrellas, were treated to LBSU’s biggest win this year. The 14-point victory over the Toronto Varsity Blues ties the largest margin of victory of the season thus far.
“Our focus has been defense, it’s the cliche saying that defense wins championships, and so that’s really been our focus,” head coach Shana Welch said.
“We allowed them to score two goals on us in the second, and that was the adjustment, that shift in the third, they came out and held them to zero and then again in the fourth.”
The Beach’s offense got rolling early, grabbing a 5-1 advantage after the first quarter. An aggressive Long Beach State defense led to some overstepping, resulting in ten power plays in the game for Toronto. All three goals for the Blues came with the six-on-five advantage that occurs in power plays, going 3-10 in those advantages on the night.
A goal by Toronto’s junior attacker Hannah Levin in the final seconds of the second quarter as the clock expired would cut The Beach’s lead in half with the score of 6-3. This would be the last bit of offense the Blues would generate on Tuesday night.
The Beach would adjust during the break, which led to them out-scoring Toronto 10-0 in the second half. The offense was able to score in a variety of ways going 2-3 on penalty shots and converting on two of their seven power plays.
An offensive explosion by graduate student attacker Kathryn McCullough in the third quarter would propel LBSU to expand their lead to double digits going into the fourth. All three of McCullough’s goals came within three minutes to close the third.
Senior utility player Anne de Kleer would put the exclamation point on this game in the final minute as she scored a season-high fifth goal at even strength to go along with two assists. The senior put her stamp all over this game as the main catalyst on offense.
“Offensively we had a really quick vibe, we all went down really quick, had some counters,” de Kleer said. “It was really nice I [received] some good assists, so shoutout to my teammates as well to help me score the five goals.”
Long Beach State currently sits at the No. 12 spot in the nation and with a win tonight they are now 7-3. They will be going up against Arizona State in Irvine at the Barbara Kalbus Invite on Friday at 3:45 p.m. as they look to extend the win streak to four games.