The No. 5-ranked Long Beach State men’s water polo team heads to Stockton this weekend for the NorCal Classic Tournament.
“Our team chemistry is much better this season then what it was before,” attacker Milos Vrzic said. “We finally have some confidence that we could beat anybody, whether it’s Stanford, USC or UCLA.”
The 49ers are the fifth seed in the tournament, and will face off against No. 12-ranked Pepperdine at San Joaquin Delta College.
Pepperdine’s record dropped to 2-2 after losing two games to Mountain Sports Federation teams, Loyola Marymount and UC Santa Barbara.
“We’ll take it game by game,” head coach Gavin Arroyo said. “There’s no room for error when you’re matched up against an MPSF team, so we’ll have to be sharp from the get-go.”
More than half of the Beach’s roster scored a goal this season, outscoring all of its opponents combined by 69 points (104-35).
According to Arroyo, there isn’t one distinguished player on the team whose talent surpasses everyone else’s because the team is so highly talented.
“The difference this year is that we are deep [amount of talent on roster],” Arroyo said. “These guys have spent a lot of time together and it’s time for us to make our mark.”
LBSU has split its series (4-4) with Pepperdine in its last eight head-to-head matches with the Waves. They defeated The Beach 10-8 during their last meeting in the 2013 season.
The winner of this weekend’s game will face either Berkeley or Santa Clara.
The 49ers will have their eye on Pepperdine’s utility, Luke Hewko, who scored a team-high 55 goals last season. But the 49ers can counter with their own arsenal of veteran defenders with the 13 upperclassmen on the roster.
“That side of the pool is our strong side with defenders Nolan McConnell and Dimitrios Lappos,” Arroyo said. “You can’t chase their [Pepperdine] tail around too much. [We] just have to stay consistent.”
Lappos said that it’s been a long time coming to get his team to be where it is now and sees how close his team is.
“We’re like a family,” Lappos said. “We’ve spent a lot of time together. We’ve been waiting for this for two years.”