By Nate Person — Staff Writer
San Jose State’s men’s water polo prevailed 10-8 in their first home win of the season against SCU.
The Spartan’s have won three in a row now. They advanced to a 4-2 record as the Broncos fell to 3-4.
The last three games for SJSU had been decided by two or fewer goals. Once again the Spartans had to bounce back from numerous mental errors throughout the game, and though they won, it was not ideal execution by any means.
“Those small mistakes are costly, but once were more in the groove of things were going to be alright,” said SJSU junior utility Giacomo Lovatelli.
The match was dominated by SJSU in the first half. In the second half the team collectively fell into a slump and let Santa Clara creep back into the match on multiple unanswered goals. Santa Clara ended up tying the game up late in the second half, but the Spartans were able to respond with two more unanswered goals in the waning minutes to seal the win.
“If we eliminate the errors that allow opponents to score the six or seven easy goals they do in a game, we will be beating them by that much,” said SJSU sophomore driver Justin Pickering.
The match was initially delayed for 40 minutes when one of the referees failed to show up for 35 minutes. The other referee never showed up at all and had to be replaced.
If this delay affected the Spartans, it was very short lived. SJSU quickly righted the ship and took the lead after going down a goal in the first few minutes.
The Spartans will look to take this momentum into Saturday when they travel to Cal Berkeley for an 11:00 a.m. match.
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