(05-12-2025, 09:09 AM)BostonCard Wrote: Sounds like a tight title match early, but Stanford pulled away in the second half and won 11-7.
Sounds like you didn't get a chance to watch. It is currently on ESPN as a replay.
For anyone who hasn't watched water polo, I suggest you treat yourself to at least the last quarter of this game (ESPN replay). Excellent play by both teams, and, of course, Stanford beats USC for a National Championship.
Stanford was clearly the best team through the year. USC had some slip-ups and was #2. UCLA was a distant #3, and then everyone else.
I was out of town this weekend and had to catch the games in replay. I didn't bother watching the 28-6 first game. The second game, against Hawaii (which beat Cal), was 11-4 and really not that close. UCLA was somewhat tested by LMU, winning 13-8. USC ran away with their 1st game. USC-UCLA was not quite as close as the score indicated (15-13).
USC has an excellent offense based on a player (or two) sitting in front of the goal ("in the hole"). They had incredible stats for goals. Ausmus averaged 3.1 goals/game while Kearns averaged 3.0 goals/game. Stryker averaged 2 goals/game for 3rd best. For defense, they play "aggressively". In the semi-final, USC had one player foul out (3 major fouls) and SIX players with 2 major fouls. I think USC must count on the refs not wanting to blow the whistle and influence the game, instead not blowing the whistle which influences the game.
Stanford has a very fast team and a lot of fire power and experience, with 5 Olympians. Their speed kills most teams, but USC was pretty much just as fast. Stanford's defense completely shut down Hawaii in the semi.
It was a rough final game. Yes, blood was drawn at least once. (It was a USC player; I didn't see the contact, but I had just noticed a collision of two USC players as they went for a Stanford player.)
The announcer was Greg Mescall with Brenda Villa (Stanford 2002) as the color announcer. They were good. Whoever was controlling the camera selection for ESPN was rather poor; it was better for the non-final games (non-ESPN). Numerous times they said things like "Our sport is the toughest to play, and the toughest to ref". (That is true. I rarely understand the refs' calls.)
I believe Stanford won 3 of the four sprints. One was basically a tie and the ball drifted out of bounds while both players tried to figure out where it had gone (that was awarded to Stanford).
As the Stanford coach said he expected, USC started off strong. Literally, USC got a couple of lucky (for USC) tips (by Stanford) that went in for goals. The USC goalie and the cage did a good job stopping Stanford shots in the first quarter. Four times, USC got out to 2 goal leads (2-0, 3-1, 4-2, 5-3). (Unfortunately I had seen which team won before I could watch the game. But it was probably fortunate for my stress levels.) Stanford was down 3-1 after the first period, but tied it up 6-6 in the last second of the first half.
The third period was a dogfight. Stanford got a goal and blanked USC. That goal came 1 minute into the third, after a USC defender was ejected and their goalie flipped the ball away very shortly afterwards, resulting in her ejection (Ejections, typically for major fouls, are temporary. 3 ejections result in a disqualification for the rest of the game). With a 6 on 4 advantage against two field players playing in the goal, Stanford got a very close-in shot. No goals or ejections for the next 4.5 minutes. IIRC, during that time, the refs warned both teams about faking fouls. Each team got one more 6-on-5 chance but no goals. The USC head coach did get a yellow card.
Going into the 4th period, Stanford had a tenuous 7-6 lead. At about 2 minutes into the period, Stanford got the first power play of the period and scored. After this, I saw USC as getting even more aggressive. A minute after that, USC's Kearns (3.0 goals/game) received her 3rd ejection as she was defending the Stanford hole player (Browne) when a rebound came to Browne. That was a clear gain for Stanford. Stanford didn't score on that power play, but scored a natural goal a couple of minutes later, going up 9-6 with 3 minutes to play.
In water polo, being up by N goals with N minutes to play is very strong as the shot clock is about a half minute. But, scoring can happen so quickly, that nothing is certain.
Sure enough, USC scores to bring it within 2 goals with just under 2 minutes to play. Stanford received a yellow card after the goal for not starting up again quickly enough (the clock is stopped, so I'm not sure why that's a big deal). With just a minute and a half to go, Stanford suffered an ejection. But USC didn't manage to score.
Then Stanford's Flynn knocks the ball out of a shooter's hand, which lead to a fast break by Dhalluin. It appears she did not want to take on the goalie, so she stopped, causing the chasing defender to swim on top of her, leading to a penalty shot. Flynn put the shot past the goalie for a 10-7 lead with under a minute to go.
Stanford's final goal was an empty-netter.
Stanford's goalie Carpenter was given MVP. She was good, but only tested by USC. She certainly did well down the stretch, but she wasn't the only reason that so few goals were scored by Stanford's opponents. Carpenter, Neshull, and Flynn got First Team honors. No Stanford players on the 2nd team. Frankly, I don't understand why USC got 2 on the first team and 2 on the second team. For their play in the 4th quarter, I think either or both of (sophomore, French Olympian) Dhalluin and (IMO, especially) (RS freshman, Canadian Olympian) Browne were deserving of at least Second Team honors.
