California Baptist University
Bucknell University
Bucking Broncos
10/21/2012 6:16:00 AM | Men's Water Polo
SANTA CLARA, Calif. --- The California Baptist University men's water polo team had two nerve-wracking games on day two of the Santa Clara Rodeo on Saturday and they ended up with a split.
"We won one, we lost one," head coach Rick Rowland said. "We played two barn-burners."
The Lancers took on the Bucknell Bison in the early game, defeating them 6-5 in a close back-and-forth game.
CBU got four goals from Matt Puig and one each from Scott Gleason and Cameron Custance.
"Puig came back after losing a tooth last night and had a heck of a game today," said Rowland.
The game was a close one, tied 4-4 after the first half. Bucknell had a strong third quarter and left the Lancers trailing 5-4 heading into the fourth. A quick goal from Custance knotted the game up, then Puig put CBU in front with 5:01 left in the game. The defense and goaltending took it from there.
Goalie Austen Ramer set the program record for saves in a career. He picked up 15 saves against Bucknell and nine against Santa Clara to push his career total to 1,043. He passed Jon Miller's previous mark of 1,025.
"Ramer was absolutely off the charts early on," said Rowland. "
Game two, against the Santa Clara Broncos, became all about a comeback for the Lancers. CBU got out to a poor start and quickly fell behind three goals at the half, down 5-2. Two goals within the first minute and a half of the third quarter brought the Lancers back to within one, but that was as close as they would get on their way to falling to Santa Clara 7-6.
Goals were hard to come by for the Lancers, but exclusions were not. CBU had a player excluded 12 times through the duration of the game, Santa Clara scored on three of those opportunities.
"We had a lot of good looks at the cage," said Rowland. "We just missed a lot of shots."
CBU got its six goals from five different players, led by Gleason who had two. David Ring, David Rodriguez, Chris Vanjoff and Custance also joined the scoring.
"If we could have cashed in on one more 6-on-5, we could have pushed it to overtime," said Rowland. "We unfortunately had to play from behind the whole game."
The win and loss move the Lancers to 13-9 on the year, with seven games to play. They next hit the pool on Oct. 26 at Air Force.
"Each week we get a chance to play a ranked team, it's great." said Rowland. "We just need to improve our frontcourt offense to be more successful."
