California Baptist University
Santa Clara University
Battling The Broncos
4/18/2014 4:55:00 AM | Women's Water Polo
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—California Baptist University closed out its regular season in dramatic fashion with a close loss to No. 18 Santa Clara. The Broncos found the game-winning goal just one second before the final buzzer, leaving the Lancers with a 15-14 deficit.
CBU was tied with the Broncos in the Golden Coast Conference coming into the game, with the two teams competing for the third seed at next week's conference tournament. CBU, which was receiving votes in the Collegiate Water Polo Association poll, drops to 20-10 on the season and 3-3 in conference, while Santa Clara moves up to 15-11 and 4-2 in the GCC.
“Santa Clara plays really well at home, so we knew it was going to be tough to play up here,” said head coach Jonathan Miller.
Despite the loss, seven Lancers tallied goals in the game, with three of them recording hat tricks. Hannah Evans had three goals before fouling out with three ejections in the third quarter—a costly loss for CBU. Evans finished with 59 regular-season goals, the second most on the team.
CBU's leading scorer, Laura Kocsis, also recorded a hat trick, rounding her season statistics to 71 goals, leaving her just eight goals behind her season high from the 2013 season.
Senior, Morgan Barrows, also produced three goals for the Lancers throughout the tight battle with the Broncos and improved her season goals to 25—fifth most on the team.
Samantha Banks turned two offensive drives into goals for the Lancers, along with single goals from Courtney Menard, Christina Young and Alyssa Birch.
By the end of first quarter, the Broncos held a 4-3 lead over CBU with all of their goals coming from 6-on-5 opportunities.
The Lancers outscored SCU 6-4 in the second quarter and pulled to a 9-8 lead at halftime—a significant feat in the neck-and-neck game.
“To score nine goals in the first half against them was really good, there haven't been many games like that this year, so that was good for us,” added Miller.
The Lancers trailed, 13-11, at the end of the third quarter and were without two other starters who were charged with three ejections. The Lancers managed to score two goals before drawing an ejection and scoring another to tie the game, 14-14, with one minute left in the game. With back-and-forth attempts and timeouts allowing each team to regroup with less than a minute left, SCU managed to find an opportunity to score off of a defensive foul and a bar-in goal with just one second left on the clock.
Meghan Rowland recorded two saves in the cage throughout the first half of play, followed by Lina Medeiros with five saves in the second half for the Lancers.
“We were happy with how we played especially being down three starters in the fourth,” said Miller. “We still played well and will continue to prepare this week for the conference championships next weekend.”
CBU heads to Los Angeles to compete in its first-ever Golden Coast Conference Championships at Loyola Marymount University on Apr. 24-26.
