By Nate Person – Staff Writer
San Jose State men’s water polo (4-4) lost 16-3 in a discouraging defeat at the hands of No. 3 Stanford (8-0).
The match took place at Avery Aquatics Center, a home game for the Cardinal, who began the game with two quick goals.
The Spartans allowed seven more unanswered goals in before they were able to finally get on the scoreboard.
Sophomore Justin Pickering scored in the second quarter to break up the shutout.
Freshmen Utku Karhan and Niels Hofmeijer tallied the other two Spartan goals on the day in the fourth quarter.
From the opening whistle onward, the game was rampant with costly defensive and offensive mistakes by the young SJSU team.
One of the Spartans’ main issues was pushing the ball up offensively after Stanford’s turnovers.
“Pushing the ball up is something we work on, but they’re also learning how hard it is to play in the division one level,” head coach Bruce Watson said.
Another key problem the team faces, is that they are still very young. Physically, many of the players are still conditioning themselves to be able to execute at the high level of play being asked of them.
“Right now we have a lot of testing of who is going to match up with who, how were going to set up offensively, and things to do with the lineup,” senior driver Cade Baldridge said.
Even though the team was emotionally down, the Spartans seemed optimistic that these were problems that would correct with time.
SJSU will look to recover from this loss when they travel south for their next match against UC Santa Barbara on Friday.
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