Youthful USC Men's Water Polo Program Eyes 7th Straight NCAA Title

Despite a subpar—for them—2014 season, Coach Jovan Vavic’s University of Southern California men’s water polo squad will be in San Diego this Saturday in a position they’ve become accustomed to over the past decade: playing for the NCAA men’s title.

The long-time USC coach will be shepherding his underclassman-laden team into what he hopes will be a tenth straight appearance for Southern Cal in the Men’s Water Polo finals, and an unprecedented seventh-straight NCAA championship. But the third-seeded Trojans are coming off back-to-back losses two weeks ago in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Tournament to the very teams they are likely to face in the NCAA tournament: Stanford, the country’s second-ranked squad, which has already beaten USC twice this season, and number one UCLA, the Trojans’ bitter crosstown rival.

Having won consistently for so long, though, allows Coach Vavic a measure of confidence that his team remains as dangerous as ever, despite a difficult season.

“Every year there are challenges,” Vavic said by telephone earlier this week. “[I]f you are a strong team you can overcome those and get stronger. [H]opefully at the end [you’ll] solve those issues.”

Revealing his pride in his young team’s success—by many measures this was supposed to be a rebuilding year at USC—Vavic said “They’ve already accomplished quite a bit.”

“But I don’t think we’re done yet.”

The Stanford Cardinal and the Trojans will face off in semifinal action Saturday at UC San Diego’s Canyonview Pool in La Jolla, while the UCLA Bruins meet the host Tritons in the other semifinal.

“It’s a game that we can win,” Vavic said about the match-up with the Cardinal. “The biggest thing is that we have to play 32 minutes. We can’t relax. There has to be an all-out effort throughout the game.”

Neither Vavic nor UCLA head coach Adam Wright would predict it, but an upset win by USC coupled with an expected Bruins’ victory would set up a final that Vavic called “a match-up for the ages.”

Wright has spent six years assembling a team capable of snapping the Trojan’s record streak. Three of USC’s titles have come at UCLA’s expense, including a thrilling 11-10 win by the Trojans at home over the Bruins in the 2012 NCAA final.

“It’s important to note that something is built over a long period of time and Jovan has put in an extreme amount of work,” Wright said, expressing admiration for his crosstown rival. “He hasn’t just been around for six years he’s been around for 20. You’ve got to look at the body of work, look at how long it took to get to this point where he’s on an incredible run.”

Vavic’s squad has amassed an impressive 23-6 record this season, despite the loss of the heart of last year’s team and the hope of this year’s. An especially tragic event was the death in January of 19-year-old freshman center Jon Walters. The Newport Beach, California native was a rising star at USC whose untimely passing was the result of a deadly combination of prescribed sleeping pills and alcohol.

Graduation claimed five seniors, all of them All-Americans. They included Vavic’s son Nikola, who became Southern Cal’s all-time leading scorer with 254 goals while being named National Player of the Year in both 2012 and 2013 by the Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches. Other key graduates were 6’5” goalie James Clark and center Jeremy Davie, a four-year starter and one of the country’s best two-meter players.

During his USC tenure Coach Vavic has continually demonstrated an ability to replenish his roster with talent plucked from all over the world. Nine freshmen, including four foreign-born players, are among 22 newcomers on the 2014 squad.

No player, freshman or otherwise, has come up bigger in 2014 than freshman goalie McQuin Baron. At 6’9”, Baron is not only substantially taller than Clark, his All-American predecessor, but is five saves away from breaking the USC single-season saves record of 268, set back in 1993 by Andrew Tinseth.

Then there’s Matteo Morelli, a freshman from Italy who has notched 39 goals for the Trojans, including two scores in last weekend’s 19-4 USC win over Whittier in the NCAA tournament play-in match.

And while Nikola Vavic prepares for tryouts for the U.S. National later this month, his former teammate, senior Kostas Genidounias, continues a prolific USC career, hitting for back-to-back 76-goal seasons to put him at 255 going into the NCAAs, breaking Vavic’s record less than a year after it was set.

What will it mean to have USC and UCLA play each other in the NCAA final for the third time in four years?

“A rivalry game, just like in any sport, it’s always going to be a great matchup,” noted UCLA’s Wright, who played for the Bruins from 1997 to 2000. “My first year coaching we beat them in the NorCal Tournament at their place. Were they a much better team? Yeah.”

Recent history may perhaps be an indicator of what to expect this weekend. After winning that first match-up with Vavic in 2009 at the North California tournament, Wright’s teams proceeded to drop thirteen of the next sixteen matches to USC. Since last year the Bruins have fashioned a 5 – 2 record over the Trojans, including a decisive 10-5 pasting in the MPSF Tournament third place match.

Or perhaps not so decisive. The wily USC coach explained that: “The game against UCLA was meaningless because win or lose we were depending upon Stanford winning against Long Beach [to qualify for the NCAAs]. We had nothing to play for…. and UCLA was fighting for the number one seed. Knowing that, it’s a difficult situation to compete, right?”

If the Bruins and the Trojans do meet in Sunday’s final, there’s no doubt that USC will come ready to compete.

“If we end up playing UCLA in the finals it’s going to be another classic,” Vavic said, then paused before continuing. “The last three finals [that USC faced UCLA] we beat them all three times. Let’s see if they can beat us if we get there again.”

PHOTO CAPTION: USC Head Coach Jovan Vavic with his players
PHOTO CREDIT: Frank Hoerman