Feb. 17, 2016 DAVIS, Calif. - A third-place finish in the Triton Invitational, a victory against the No. 5 team in the country, and now a No. 5 national ranking of its own stand as either rare or unprecedented feats for UC Davis women's water polo, yet the current week has seen each come to fruition.
Head coach
Jamey Wright, now in his 33rd year at the helm, has seen it all in his storied career: national championships during the program's club days, National Team members, NCAA postseason berths. Despite the cautious optimism trained by decades of ups and downs could not prevent the veteran coach from giving his team its due.
"You can't not be happy for what this team has done," said Wright. "As I told them, it's a reflection for the work they've put in, not just this year but over the summer. It's a process. Balls bounce weird ways and calls go weird ways. But I do believe in the old Abraham Lincoln saying: 'the harder I work, the better luck I seem to have.' When you put it a lot of hard work, it pays off."
Nonetheless, Wright and his Aggie players correctly have their eyes pointed forward, as the achievements from the previous week stand only as the first stage of a long season. UC Davis holds an 8-4 record, meaning it has hit roughly the one-third mark of the year. Furthermore, the home-opening Davis Shootout poses its share of challenges: 24th-ranked CSU Bakersfield and Brown in a Saturday doubleheader, then No. 4 Stanford on Sunday.
The weekend after brings the UCI Invitational, a de facto national championship in that it invites a tougher top-to-bottom field than even the NCAA tournament.
"If we move up to No. 5, we'll play the No. 12 seed at UCI. That's not going to be an easy game," said Wright, before the weekly national rankings had come out. "That will be an LMU or a Pacific â€" somebody good. So we don't have the luxury of resting on our laurels. A team like UCLA can play a lackluster first half and score five goals but their defense is so good that they'll win the game. But we have to play well in every game."
Fortunately, UC Davis has done exactly that for two straight weekends since its long double-bye in January. Offense has almost never been a concern, what with five Aggies averaging more than a goal per game. Senior Allyson Hansen leads the attack with 24 goals, while juniors Carla Tocchini and Hannah Harvey have 19 and 17, respectively. Bryn Lutz, who scored the game-winner from nearly midtank to beat then-No. 5 Arizona State has another 16 goals. Senior Ariel Arcidiacono totals 13 goals and a team-leading 12 assists. On top of that, several players beyond the usual suspects provided key goals, particularly in the upset of the Sun Devils: defender Hailey Wright netted her first goal of the season, while freshman McKenna Hauss and senior Courtney Weddle surprised anyone who doesn't see the team on a daily basis.
"Everyone on our team knows that Courtney Weddle can score from anywhere, but other teams don't know that," Wright said. "They gave her a narrow opportunity, and she hosed it in that inimitable Courtney way."
Even more satisfying for Wright has been the defense. In the first six games of the year, UC Davis surrendered 49 goals, with four games of double-digit offense against. In the last six, the Aggies have stifled opponents to 37 goals, including five with six goals or fewer. Even top-ranked UCLA managed just five, an all-time low in that series.
Wright credits his team's transition defense for holding down scores. "One of the things we did really well was cover up on the other team's transitions. UCLA feeds off that, and historically, we'd say we gave up seven counterattack goals. We made them play front-court, and we made ASU and Irvine play front-court. I think that's a reflection of our fitness."
Once in a half-court defense, UC Davis did a commendable job at forcing opponents to take shots from poor angles, allowing the goaltending tandem of Haley Cameron and Olivia Husted to post outstanding numbers. The two combined for 48 saves against 25 goals for a .657 average. Husted was particularly masterful: she notched a career-high 18 stops in Saturday's 12-6 win over UC Irvine, then another 11 in the victory over ASU to capture Big West Conference Player of the Week honors. However, her last minute of the finale may have been her magnum opus thus far: big saves against a Sun Devil power play, giving the Aggies possession with two seconds remaining, plus an assist to Lutz on the game-winning lob.
"It's nothing earth-shattering: everything we do defensively is designed force shots from poor angles," said Wright. "We all understand that, but you can't always execute it. We're getting better at recognizing where to be defensively to force a poor-angle shot, which gives the goalie a better chance to make a block.
"Having said that, Liv made some amazing stops against some point-blank shots."
Now with the first home contests on the near horizon, UC Davis heads into Act 2 of the season, with plenty of room to improve â€" a concept that must be downright frightening to opponents. The 8-4 record, the success against Top 10 teams, the national rankings are gratifying, per Wright, but there still are "silly things" that need fine-tuning. Among them is his team's patience, the USAWP Hall of Famer says.
"As I told the team, we have a video-game mentality," said Wright. "We want to score right now, with no patience. So I said let's take our time, let's go a little wider here, let's make one extra pass and then we go for it. But we want it now. In a video game, when your car goes off the road, the game restarts immediately. Here, we don't get another chance, we just lose the ball. So we're working on being more patient on offense and more disciplined on defense, and playing to our strengths."
The Aggies' home crowd will finally see the 2016 brand of UC Davis women's water polo in the form of the 36th Davis Shootout tournament, which also features No. 3 California and No. 12 Pacific in addition to the Aggies' three opponents. Meet results can be found at www.ucdavisaggies.com/sports/w-wpolo/spec-rel/16-shootout.html.
SKIP SHOTS: UC Davis climbed to No. 5 in the final 2008 national poll; however, the program's highest ranking during a season was No. 6 earlier that year... The Aggies finished sixth at the UCI Invitational and thus earned that spot in the poll the following week... That 2008 team eventually won the Western Water Polo Association, advanced to the NCAA Championship at Stanford, then upset San Diego State in the first round to reach the semifinals... The national finish led to a No. 5 ranking in the final year-end poll… Allyson Hansen won Big West Player of the Week on February 10 with Olivia Husted grabbing the honor a week later, marking the first time since April 2012 that UC Davis won back-to-back conference awards… Carmen Eggert (April 18) and Rachel Tatusko (April 25) scored those awards almost four years ago… That 2012 season also had the most overall winners: Eggert snared her first on March 7 while Riane Woods picked up the award on March 21… Coincidentally, Woods' nod came for the previous time an Aggie goalie recorded 18 saves in a game… Woods, Husted and Casey Hines (2010) now hold a three-way tie for second in the school record book... Hansen's team-leading total of 24 goals raises her career total to 125, moving her ahead of Casie Mota (2004-08) into eighth all-time... She needs eight to pass Dakotah Mohr (2008-12) for seventh.
CSU BAKERSFIELD (3-7) entered the top 25 thanks to a 12-9 win over then-No. 20 Wagner and a one-goal loss to UC San Diego at the UC Santa Barbara Invitational... The Roadrunners then split the Cal Baptist Mini tournament, with a 12-9 loss to No. 22t Cal Baptist and a 10-9 win over Azusa Pacific... They have been idle for the last two weekends... Sophomore driver Ashley Paz has 18 goals while goalie Courtney Wahlstrom has 100 saves with 74 goals against for a .575 average... BROWN (1-6) notched its first win of the year against St. Francis at its own Bruno Classic, but has shown some mettle with a close 6-3 battle against Wagner and a 10-goal output against then-No. 4 Hawaii... Though located across the country in Providence, Rhode Island, the Bears have one very familiar face: junior Marisa Kolokotronis, who scored 53 goals in 2015, is the sister of recent Aggie soccer player Conti Kolokotronis and daughter of Sacramento Kings president of business operations Matina Kolokotronis... No. 4 STANFORD (7-1) took a weekend off after suffering its first loss to archrival Cal on February 7, a setback that knocked the Cardinal out of the No. 1 spot in the poll... Freshman Kat Klass, who scored four in the previous meeting with UC Davis, leads Stanford with 17 goals while junior driver Jamie Neuhsul is close behind with 15.
