Oilers playing for history

For the unbiased observer, Saturday’s CIF Southern Section Division 1 boys’ water polo title match between Huntington Beach High and Orange Lutheran offers intrigue.

Neither the No. 3-seeded Oilers nor the No. 4 Lancers have ever won a CIF title in boys’ water polo. It could be said that both programs have been building toward this moment.

But for Huntington Beach, winning this game is the way a stellar senior class, including four Pac-12 recruits in Quinten Osborne, Ethan Wojciechowski, Ryan Hurst and goalie Patrick Saunders, can go out on top.

The teams play for the title at 5:45 p.m. Saturday at Irvine’s Woollett Aquatics Center.

“This final was, I think, a long time coming,” Huntington Beach Coach Sasa Branisavljevic said. “It should be a good one. I think we’re going to match up well against OLu, even better so in my mind than against Harvard-Westlake. But it is the final game. We are prepared for everything and we’re going to be at full strength, so I think we’re going to put on a really good show.”

Sunset League champion Huntington Beach (24-3) has met Trinity League champion Orange Lutheran (25-3) once before this season. The Oilers beat the Lancers, 7-3, in a nonleague game at Ocean View High on Oct. 29.

But it is tough to glean too much information from that meeting. Orange Lutheran junior standout Ash Molthen didn’t enter until the fourth quarter and played sparingly, while Lancers senior Josh Orrick also was limited.

Molthen is a close second to fellow junior Hannes Daube with 73 goals this season, and leads Orange Lutheran with 71 assists.

He’s looked fine in the postseason, notching three goals and six assists in the Lancers’ 15-10 win over Corona del Mar in the quarterfinals and two goals and two assists in the Lancers’ 9-5 win over top-seeded Los Angeles Loyola in Wednesday’s semifinals.

In Daube and Molthen, Orange Lutheran has two dynamic attackers who can pepper the defense with shots from the outside.

“We know [the Orange Lutheran] guys very well,” Branisavljevic said. “Most of them come from Vanguard [club, where Branisavljevic is club director] actually, so I know them personally very well. I developed a few of them myself. We are prepared. We are ready to go … anywhere this game takes us, I think we’re going to be able to cope and adjust and come out as winners in the end.”

Huntington Beach has faith in its defense, including the UCLA-bound goalie Saunders and the Cal-bound Hurst. Saunders has matched his season-high with 14 saves in both of the Oilers’ last two playoff wins, an 11-5 quarterfinal triumph at defending champion Mater Dei and Wednesday’s 7-6 semifinal victory over Harvard-Westlake. The Oilers blanked the Wolverines in the fourth quarter, with Huntington Beach center Garrett Zaan providing the winning goal with 4:21 remaining in the game.

Zaan, a transfer from Orange Lutheran, gets a chance to play against his former team in the final.

Osborne, a fellow center who is bound for UCLA, leads the Oilers with 56 goals this season. Huntington Beach also gets back its second-leading scorer, junior lefty Curtis Jarvis, for the championship game. Jarvis had to sit out the semifinals after earning a major act of misconduct in the quarterfinal victory.

The Oilers have won 15 straight games headed into the championship game. And the core senior group, which Branisavljevic coached to a national championship as 14-and-under boys at Vanguard, wants to finish off with another win.

“There was a big hype around us,” Branisavljevic said. “We were the team that was talented but didn’t really win, and now we’re in a position to actually put it away. I know the boys are really excited to be in that situation.”