Wednesday, May 1, 2024

A Women's Water Polo NCAA Return

The NCAA women's water polo selections were announced Monday night. 

There are nine teams in the field, seven of whom advance directly to the main draw and two of whom will compete in a play-in game. Want to guess in what state six of those nine teams reside? 

Shockingly, the answer is "California." The other three states? 

One of them is New York, home to Wagner, who will play one of the California schools — Biola — in the play-in game. Biola is located in Los Angeles and is primarily a Division II school, one whose nickname is the Eagles.

New Jersey is obviously one of the others. Princeton earned the tournament's No. 7 seed after rolling through the College Water Polo Association, going unbeaten in the regular season and then winning the league tournament this past weekend.

More specifically, Princeton was 12-0 in the league during the regular season. The tournament? That was anything but easy.

The Tigers defeated Brown 9-7 in the semifinals in a game that was tied 7-7 late in the third quarter. Kayla Yelensky scored four times for Princeton in that game.

That advanced Princeton into the final against Michigan, where again the Tigers would find themselves tied late. This time, Princeton had to come from behind after digging a 4-1 hole, and it was still 4-3 Wolverines at the break.

Princeton went up 9-7 in the fourth quarter, only to see Michigan come back and even things at 9-9 with 1:45 left. Ava Houlahan then scored the game-winner 24 seconds later.

The moral? Winning in the postseason is never, ever easy.

Princeton's win advanced the Tigers into the NCAA field as the No. 7 seed. The first round opponent will be the only other team not from California, and that would be second-seeded Hawaii one week from Friday at 7 Eastern time.

How many players from Hawaii are on the Hawaii team? There aren't any. 

The head coach is named Maureen Cole. You owe it to yourself to check out the picture on her bio on the Hawaii webpage.

Cole's job is to convince top players to come to Oahu. How hard can that be? She has six from California, but she also has seven other countries on the team: Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, Canada, South Africa and Brazil. 

Princeton, who brings a record of 23-6 into the NCAA tournament, has 13 players from California, as well as three from Connecticut and one from Australia.

Princeton reached the NCAA semifinals a year ago, with a win over Cal in the quarterfinals. This trip will be the fifth in program history, with the others in 2012, 2013 and 2015.

Basically, Princeton has become a national water polo powerhouse, between the men's team and the women's team. You may recall that the men's team went 28-6 last fall, reaching the NCAA semifinals as well after taking down UC-Irvine in the quarterfinals. 

This is all a credit to several people, most notably current head coaches Derek Ellingson and Dusty Litvak and former head coach Luis Nicolao, now at Navy. What has been built in DeNunzio Pool is very, very special.

The women's tournament will be held at Cal, who is the third seed and who opens with Fresno State. The winner of that game will take on the winner of Princeton-Hawaii in the semifinals May 11, also at 7 Eastern.

The other side of the draw has No. 1 seed UCLA against the winner of the play-in game and the 4-5 game between Stanford and Southern Cal.

Hey, it just dawned on TigerBlog that today is May 1. How about that? Where does the time go? 

The Princeton women's water polo team began its season back on Jan. 26. Who was Princeton's first opponent? 

Hint - it's also the next one. The Tigers opened their season in Hawaii's pool, with a 10-6 loss. 

Now the hope is that the season doesn't end against the same opponent.


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