Harold stuffs Mesa

CORONA DEL MAR — Danny Harold was in the zone.

The Sage Hill School senior boys’ water polo goalie was coming from nowhere to make saves, eliminating seemingly easy Costa Mesa High goals. And when the Mustangs would draw exclusions on the Lightning, Harold and the Sage Hill defense only used it as an opportunity to come up big again.

The defensive effort helped Sage Hill win both teams’ Orange Coast League opener, 10-8, Wednesday night at Corona del Mar High.

Costa Mesa had plenty of chances to defeat the team it lost to twice last year by a single goal, launching the Lightning into the CIF Southern Section Division II playoffs and keeping the Mustangs home. But the Mustangs couldn’t finish on their power-play opportunities this time around, going just one for 10 and failing to score on their last nine six-on-fives.

After the game, Mustangs Coach Justin Taylor, himself a former goalie for Mesa, walked over to Harold to shake his hand.

“Danny Harold played one of his best games of his career,” Sage Hill Coach Tom Norton said. “He saved us so many times when some of our other defensive players got into bad positioning on defense...He defended the goal perfectly. The goalie’s your last line of defense and he stepped up and blocked everything that came his way, when he needed to.”

Mesa (5-5) came out noticeably energized and led, 2-1, after the first quarter on a pair of goals from senior Sam Edman.

But Sage Hill (6-1) owned the second quarter, when the Lightning scored four unanswered goals to storm to a 5-2 halftime lead.

Tucker Pettis, Jimmy Miller, Beau Caillouette and Andrew Dorne each scored in the quarter.

The comeback didn’t surprise Harold, for one.

“I think the first quarter a lot of times can be dominated by emotion,” said Harold, who had 12 saves. “A team that comes out really fired up but may not be as good as the other team, [the former] may actually perform better. But once you get into the second, third or fourth quarters, that kind of weeds it out. I think the better team will prevail.”

The Mustangs didn’t give up, cutting the Lightning lead to two goals on five separate occasions in the second half.

The last time was when Dustin Serrano’s long shot at the shot-clock buzzer went in, trimming the Lightning lead to 10-8 with 2:33 left in the game.

But neither team would score again.

Miller said they figured out that Costa Mesa liked to shoot it from a particular position on its six-on-fives, and the Lightning adjustments limited the Mustangs’ effectiveness.

Several of the Lightning players said they also played with Edman on the SET club team out of El Toro this summer, and the familiarity also helped Sage Hill plan its defense.

“Unfortunately, what they were doing didn’t allow us to execute our play,” Taylor said. “We need to come up with a solution for that and be prepared to see it again. We’re just going to shift our focus to Laguna Beach next week, then Estancia the following week. We’ll just keep playing solid, and when we see these guys again we’ll be ready.”

The teams will meet again on Oct. 17 at Costa Mesa High.

For the Lightning, which had one player foul out and Caillouette and Pettis each within another exclusion of fouling out, there were also things to work on.

“We had some stupid, stupid backcourt ejections, getting ejected while you’re driving,” Miller said. “That was really bad form in general, and that cost us a lot of the game. I feel like we could have made that game not so close. We could have definitely won by a more substantial margin, and that’s probably what we’re going to be shooting for in our next game against them.

“It’s always fun to play against them though,” Miller added. “We haven’t played against a team that we’ve been fired up for and that’s in our skill area. They definitely fulfill that.”

Orange Coast League

Sage Hill 10, Costa Mesa 8

SCORE BY QUARTERS

CM – Edman 3, Twohig 3, D. Serrano 2. Saves – O’Connor 6.

SH – Caillouette 3, Pettis 3, Miller 3, Dorne 1. Saves – Harold 12.

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or by e-mail at matthew.szabo@latimes.com.