Aidan Bostic (@bostic_aidan) – Spear Reporter
San Jose State men’s water polo (10-16, 0-6 GCC) fell to No. 3 Santa Barbara (14-12, 3-2 GCC0) 9-7 in the first round of the Golden Coast Conference Championship after jumping out to an early lead.
SJSU is 0-3 against UCSB this season. The Spartans lost to the Gauchos 10-9 in a nail-biter in September and 14-8 in late October.
Graduate students Niels Hofmeijer and Utku Karhan scored in the first quarter to give SJSU the lead. For a moment, it appeared the Spartans were going to run away with the game.
Despite the strong start, the Spartans gave up two points at the end of the first to make it a 3-2 game going into the second.
In the second quarter, SJSU allowed two more goals to trail by a point. Sophomore Laszlo Szieben scored at the 1:30 mark and tied the match 4-4 going into halftime.
In the third quarter, the Spartans gave up three unanswered goals to go down 7-4 and the match started to slip away.
Juniors Mark Kis, Nikola Nikolic and Gal Hamovich all scored in the fourth quarter, but it was not enough to make up for the lack of offense in the third.
SJSU evenly spread the wealth with seven different Spartans scoring.
They outscored UCSB 3-2 in the first and fourth quarters. SJSU had four more shots on goal with 30 but still could not squeeze out the win.
Their loss in the Golden Coast Conference Championship marks the end of SJSU men’s water polo’s season and its last season in the Golden Coast Conference. The Spartans are joining the West Coast Conference in 2023.
Men’s water polo will become the 16th West Coast Conference sport and will include LMU, Pacific, Pepperdine, Santa Clara, SJSU, Air Force and California Baptist.
The Spartans finished the season 10-16 in regular season play and 0-5 in conference play.