California Baptist University
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges
THE TROUTMAN TURNAROUND
10/1/2011 2:02:00 AM | Men's Water Polo
RIVERSIDE, Calif. --- California Baptist University demonstrated something they have yet had opportunity to prove until today. Their resiliency. In two back-to-back wins in the first day of the Lancer Invite over California Lutheran and Claremont Mudd-Scripps , the Lancers secured a four-game winning streak, their longest of the season, to return CBU water polo to its winning tradition.
In the early afternoon matchup against Claremont Mudd-Scripps, CBU held off the Stags last minute push for overtime and held on to their 16-15 lead for the win. With four lead changes and six ties, CBU's best defense today was their offense.
Led by four goals from Brent Troutman and three from Scott Butler, CBU continued its balanced scoring with six more Lancers contributing goals against CMS.
"We still have good balanced scoring," Head Coach Rick Rowland said. "We're executing our offense pretty well and we're getting up the pool. I can't complain about the offense."
After trading goals for nearly the entire first quarter, CBU jumped out to 5-3 first quarter lead fueled by a goal from Matt Puig with 39 seconds remaining and a shot from David Rodriguez that barely beat-out the buzzer.
Neither tem held a strong advantage in their 6-on-5 opportunities. CBU scored in three of their five chances while Claremont also scored three of their seven. However, three straight unmatched goals by the Stags forced a 9-9 tie and set the stage for a high-scoring and intense fourth quarter.
Though the Stags struck first, Chris Toy countered with his second goal of the day less than thirty seconds later. The fourth quarter hat-trick from Troutman plus goals from Rodriguez, Trevor Rowland and Scott Gleason put the score out of reach, despite the thirty-six second goal from the Stags.
Troutman also won three sprints in the game. Peter Hines contributed with an assist, a steal and three drawn ejections.
The Lancers stayed on the pool deck and followed up with a 15-10 win over the California Lutheran Kingsmen.
With 12 first-half goals, it seemed as if CBU wasn't feeling a drop of fatigue, but a slow offense and a stagnant defense accounted for four goals from the Kingsmen in the later half of the evening game.
"We're just not playing good transitional defense at all and that has to change," Rowland said. "When we missed, we had several two-goal turnarounds where we had a 6-on-5 and missed and they counterattacked the other way and scored."
Despite the lacking transitional defense, CBU did tally 12 steals against CLU, including two from goalkeeper Austen Ramer, who also added another seven saves.
CBU received three goals from Troutman and Hines apiece as well as scores from Jeremy Atkinson and Evan Vardayou.
With the two wins, CBU improves to 8-4 and will face Chapman, Whittier and Vanguard tomorrow in the final day of the Lancer Invitational.
