April 26, 2006
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THIS WEEK
April 28-30 - at WWPA Championships (at UC San Diego), All Day
LAST WEEK
April 21 - PACIFIC, W, 16-3
NOTES
UC Davis concluded the regular season at home last Friday with a non-conference win over Pacific, 16-3... The Aggies were led by Cassie Schaefer and Jessica Soza who each posted a hat trick in the game... The three Aggie seniors, Jessi Lafayette, Katie O'Neill and Megan Jimenez, were honored prior to the game... Lafayette scored twice and O'Neill once on senior day... Katherine O'Rourke continues to lead the Aggies' scoring with 42 goals this season... O'Rourke ranks ninth on the UC Davis career scoring list, she has posted 88 goals in her three seasons with the Aggies... O'Rourke is also T9th for most goals in a season... Christi Raycraft continues to lead the team in both assists (29) and steals (37)... Raycraft only needs two more steals to tie Kim Parker's (2001) season steals record with 31 total... As a team, UC Davis continues to be ranked third in the nation defensively behind Stanford and UCLA... The Aggies average only 4.5 goals allowed per game... In this week's Collegiate Water Polo Association Top-20 Poll, the Aggies are ranked fourteenth for the third consecutive week and for the tenth week this season... UC Davis currently holds a season record of 17-11.
UPCOMING OPPONENTS
The Aggies will head to UC San Diego this weekend to participate in the 2006 Western Water Polo Association Championships which will be played at Canyonview Aquatics Center... The Aggies received the No. 2 seed into the tournament after going 10-3 in conference action this season... No. 6 Loyola Marymount, who the Aggies have lost two narrow games to this season (3-2 on Mar. 29 and 10-8 on Apr. 9), has received the top seed into this year's tournament... The only other conference loss UC Davis has faced this season was against No. 15 UC San Diego at the UC Santa Barbara Gaucho Invitational in February, the Aggies lost 5-4 in overtime... Earlier this month UC Davis defeated UC San Diego at the Davis Shootout, 6-5... UC San Diego has received the No. 4 seed into the tournament and No. 17 Santa Clara has earned the No. 3 spot... The Aggies will open the tournament on Friday against the winner between Chapman and Cal State Bakersfield.
The winner of the tournament will represent the conference at the 2006 NCAA Women's Water Polo National Championships being held at UC Davis' own Schaal Aquatics Center on May 12-15... UC Davis has not finished first in conference since 1999, but has not finished lower than third place in the seven years it has been a member of the WWPA... The Aggies finished second last year after falling 8-4 to Loyola Marymount in the championship game.
HEAD COACH Jamey Wright
On WWPA's: "I am definitely excited. We have been making our way through the season working towards this and we are playing as well now as we have all season. I am confident about the chance of us winning conference as I have ever been, but I am also as weary about being upset in the first round. The conference is strong from number one to number eight. This could be a very upset-filled type of weekend, so I am going to go in with guarded confidence."
"Whoever comes out of the Chapman and Bakersfield game is good and if we hold our seed and face Santa Clara, they are a much tougher team than we faced earlier this season. The possibilities are wide open this weekend."
