Mesa’s comeback falls short

COSTA MESA — In the second half, the Costa Mesa High boys’ water polo team came out extremely fired up.

Problem was, the Mustangs were already down by four goals in Tuesday’s nonleague game against Tesoro.

Tesoro bent but didn’t break to outlast Costa Mesa, 12-7, at Costa Mesa High.

“At the beginning of the third and the beginning of the fourth, we came out really strong,” Mustangs Coach Justin Taylor said. “The problem was that we couldn’t maintain that intensity throughout the entire game. That was really hard for us. We definitely had moments where we were in the game, but we couldn’t capitalize.”

Costa Mesa (3-3) took its 5-1 halftime deficit and cut it to two, on a man-advantage goal from senior Sam Edman and a goal from two meters by junior Cody Serrano.

Then, the visiting Titans (2-0) scored three successive six-on-five goals to end the third quarter with a commanding 9-3 advantage.

“We didn’t give up, and it looked for a second like we’d get back in the game,” Taylor said. “But Tesoro didn’t give up the whole game, either. They kept hammering away.”

The Mustangs got within 10-7 on Edman’s third goal of the game, a counterattack effort with 2:59 left. But Costa Mesa couldn’t get closer.

Edman’s three goals led the Mustangs, who got a game-high five steals from Dustin Serrano. Cody Serrano, Skyler Twohig and Garrett Frazier each had a goal and two steals for Mesa.

Craig Colton and Brian Schneiderman each had three goals for Tesoro, which converted all six of its power-play opportunities.

“We’ve actually been doing really good on our six-on-five defense,” Taylor said. “We’ve only been letting in 29% through the first five games. I don’t know what happened today.”