No. 8 Gauchos Fall to No. 4 USC 13-6 on Senior Day, With the Title Decider Still to Come

The No. 8 UC Santa Barbara men's water polo team lost its final home game of the season on Saturday, falling 13-6 to No. 4 USC in a Senior Day game at Santa Barbara High School. USC Athletics says the win finished the Trojans' nonconference season, gave them a 12th win over a ranked opponent this year and moved them to 15-5 overall, with one game left in their regular season.

USC scored first and early. Ante Jerkovic put the Trojans ahead 45 seconds into the game, scoring off an Efe Naipoglu assist, according to the USC account of the match.

fozi999, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The day still carried a marker of how far the Gauchos' defense has come this season. Goalkeeper Wyatt Pieretti, one of the two graduating players honored before the game, made 12 saves, according to the UC Santa Barbara Athletics recap, and the 13 goals Santa Barbara allowed are less than half the 27 USC scored against the Gauchos when the teams first met on the opening weekend of the season. Santa Barbara's own preview of the weekend put that first meeting at 27-10, on the opening weekend at the end of August.

Pieretti and Thomas Colpo were the graduating players the program celebrated on Saturday, with the Senior Day ceremony held before the 1 p.m. start, Santa Barbara's preview says.

The loss does not settle the Gauchos' season. Santa Barbara travels to Cal State Fullerton on Sunday for a noon game at the Titan Aquatics Center, and a win there earns the Gauchos a share of the Big West Regular Season Championship, which would be the program's first Big West title of any kind since 1990, according to the team's preview of the weekend. Both the stakes and the venue were set before Saturday's game was played, and they remain exactly where the preview left them.

Via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)