Huntington Beach boys’ water polo uses amazing goal to advance to CIF semifinals
WESTMINSTER — Huntington Beach is headed to the CIF Southern Section water polo semifinals for the third time in four years, thanks to a bit of magic and immense resolve.
Dusan Djordjevic’s 15-yard lob to beat the shot clock late in Wednesday evening’s Division 1 quarterfinal showdown at Westminster High somehow found the upper-left corner, lifting the defending champions to an 11-10 upset triumph over No. 2-seeded Long Beach Wilson and rewarding the seventh-seeded Oilers’ exacting defensive performance.
Huntington Beach (15-14), which heads Tuesday to No. 3 Mira Costa for a final four bout, denied the 14-time CIF titlists service into star two-meter man Enzo Brigagliano and responded decisively when the Bruins (21-11) twice rallied from three-goal deficits to pull even, finally securing the victory on a Jacob Duong steal in the final seconds.
“It has to be the best [we’ve played this year],” said first-year Huntington Beach head coach Nick Graffis, the longtime Edison coach who took over when Sasa Branisavljevic resigned following Huntington Beach’s first CIF championship, a 10-9 thriller against Laguna Beach a year ago. “The best opponent we’ve beaten this year, as well.”
The defensive work, anchored by goalkeeper Henry Haddad’s sterling play, two three-goal bursts — the first in a dominant first-quarter display, the second after Wilson forged a 5-5 tie not quite three minutes into the third quarter — and Isaac Squires’ five goals, four in the second half, had Huntington Beach in charge most of the way.
It was Djordjevic’s jaw-dropping strike with 1:06 to play, an unexpected wow to punctuate a sizzling encounter, that will play prominently in Oiler lore. It was 10-10 after Vaughan Baker’s third goal, and Wilson’s fifth with a man-advantage, with 1:36 left. The senior attacker — one of two starters to return from the title team — found himself on the right flank, not so far from mid-pool, with no reasonable options and the shot clock nearing zero.
Djordjevic, dealing with a head cold, lobbed a no-chancer toward the net, and it floated toward and then caromed in off the upper-left corner of the goal frame. His reaction: disbelief and elation.
“Honestly, I didn’t know what it was,” he said. “I saw six [Wilson] shot-blockers, had no idea what to do, saw the clock at two seconds, wound up, threw it, and it happened. If I shot that shot a million times, I would never hit it again. Pure luck, but it happened. It’s what we needed.”
Said Squires: “That was just cherry on the cake.”
Wilson had two more forays, but Samson Casem fired wide with 50 seconds remaining, Duong picked off Fernando Rejon’s pass on the next incursion, and the celebration was on moments later.
“The energy today was phenomenal,” Graffis said. “I know we’re exhausted, I know we’re tired, but everybody, man, the energy. We were moving fast on defense, pushing the counterattack, and we always work hard to strike. But there’s [an extra burst of energy], and you never know whether it’s there or not until a game like this, and they found out it was there.”
Djordjevic scored two goals — the first on a one-on-one break after stealing the ball at mid-pool three minutes into the second quarter — and assisted two more, and Duong, Jay Larson and UC Irvine-bound defender Charlie Jones added goals. Haddad punctuated his performance with a stop on Elijah Vince’s penalty shot to maintain a 9-8 lead with 3:20 to go.
Huntington Beach forced nine turnovers on Wilson’s first 14 possessions, well into the second quarter. But the Bruins used 4-1 runs, each with a dagger, to close out the first half and start the second to make it 5-5. Then, from the third into the fourth for a 9-9 score after Squires scored three goals in four possessions of the third quarter.
Two goals were quite painful: Keegan Abing’s strike 3.5 seconds before halftime and Casem’s tip-in off a rebound with a second to go in the third quarter, both trimming deficits to a goal.
Squires restored the lead with a cross-cage goal shot right after the latter Wilson equalizer and Baker answered immediately, setting the scene for Djordjevic’s heroics.
It leaves the Oilers one win from a shot at successive titles. Mira Costa (21-11), a 15-10 quarterfinal winner at Laguna Beach, claimed the first meeting this year, 12-8, in the elite S&R Sport Tournament six weeks ago.
“I’m just so happy, so excited,” Djordjevic said. “I know we’re going to play as hard as we can, no matter what happens. The process matters, the result will come.”
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