‘Eaters get nowhere

Steve Virgen

“Atrocious.”

That’s how UC Irvine men’s water polo coach Ted Newland described

his team’s performance in the Anteaters’ most important game of the

season. UCI, which needed to win or finish second in the Mountain

Pacific Sports Federation Tournament to advance to the four-team NCAA

Tournament, lost its first-round game, 8-4, to UC Berkeley Friday at

the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos.

The Anteaters finished 2 for 12 in extra-man situations, while Cal

went 5 for 7, and on one of its man-up opportunities, the Bears chose

to run out the clock to end the game. In addition to UCI’s

six-on-five woes, Anteater senior Jeff Powers had a poor shooting

day, and fellow two-meter standout sophomore Dreason Barry was held

to only five shots, including one in the final quarter.

Powers, who led UCI with two goals, is No. 2 in the MPSF with 63

goals, while Barry, who did not score Friday, is No. 3 with 60 goals.

Powers made two of his 12 shots (16.6%).

“We just couldn’t shoot,” Newland said. “Some days are like that.

When you can’t shoot you can’t win. We actually played pretty good

defense for the first three quarters. Then the guys got kind of

frantic. I don’t know what it was. We’ve been scoring at least 50% on

our extra-man all year long. They didn’t really defend us

particularly well, but we just took bad shots.”

Newland also said Cal goalie Russell Bernstein played a great

game, but that the Anteaters made him look better because of the bad

shots they took. Bernstein recorded 13 saves, including five in each

of the first two quarters.

One of his best saves came with 2:10 left in the first quarter,

when Powers had a wide-open shot about two meters in front of the

cage. But, Bernstein anticipated Powers’ shot correctly and stuffed

the shot. Powers missed his first six shots, and by that time the

Bears built a 5-1 lead with 4:32 left in the third quarter.

“Powers had a lot of open shots and Russell kept turning him

back,” Cal Coach Kirk Everist said. “Early on in the game that helped

us and gave us some confidence. We were also successful in our

extra-man and that is very important in these games.”

Attila Banhidy led the Bears with four goals, scoring three in the

first half when Cal held a 3-1 advantage.

UCI junior Phil Garcia scored the Anteaters’ first goal with 6:07

left in the first half. Charlie Fisher, a UCI sophomore, fired a shot

on a breakaway, but Bernstein blocked it. However, Garcia was there

for the rebound and he quickly tipped in the loose ball to bring UCI

within, 2-1. Garrett Gentry also scored one goal for UCI on an

extra-man opportunity.

The Anteaters came as close as 6-4 with 6:39 left in the fourth

when Powers scored on a six-on-five opportunity. But then UCI failed

to take advantage of an extra-man situation, and three minutes later

Banhidy scored a power-play goal to increase Cal’s lead, 7-4, with

2:44 left.

“I shot terribly,” Powers said. “Our offense wasn’t clicking

today. We had our opportunities, but we couldn’t put it away. It got

out of hand. We missed all the shots that we usually put away. It was

just us. Their goalie played very well, but we should have put them

away. It was our fault. Our coach was saying, (today against UOP) is

really going to be the test to see if we’re men, to see if we can

come back and play hard for the games that we know won’t mean much. I

want to definitely end the season and end my career at UCI the best I

can.”

UCI (15-10), ranked No. 4 in the nation but seeded sixth in the

MPSF tourney, will play today at 2:30 p.m. against University of the

Pacific, which lost 12-9 to Stanford.

The winner will advance to the fifth-place game Sunday at 2:30

p.m.

Cal (17-6), ranked No. 2 in the nation and seeded third, will face

Stanford in the championship semifinals. Top-ranked Stanford, favored

to win the tournament, is coached by John Vargas, a former NCAA

All-American at UC Irvine and former head man of Corona del Mar High.

Brian Kreutzkamp, a former Newport Harbor coach, is the Cardinal’s

assistant.

UCLA, which features former Newport Harbor standout Peter Belden

and CdM product Michael March, advanced to the championship

semifinals with a 7-6 victory over rival USC, in sudden-death

overtime.

MPSF TOURNAMENT

First Round

Cal 8, UC Irvine 4

UC Irvine 0 1 2

1 -- 4

Cal 2 1 3 2

-- 8

UCI - Powers 2, Garcia 1, Gentry. Saves -- Finfrock

3.

Cal - Banhidy 4, Panawek 2, Conte 1, Quist 1. Bernstein

13.