USC Hopes for Another Shot at Stanford

One team stands between the second-ranked USC men’s water polo team and its first NCAA title: top-ranked Stanford.

The Trojans came frustratingly close to beating the Cardinal last Saturday before losing, 11-10, at USC.

USC led most of the game and was ahead, 10-8, with less than two minutes to play. But Antonio Busquets scored, then Wolf Wigo scored a two-point goal for the Cardinal.

“That game is just a real tough one to lose because, for the flow of most of the game, we had control,” Trojan Coach John Williams said.

The teams will be gunning for one another again at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament Saturday and Sunday at Belmont Plaza Pool in Long Beach. As many as five teams from the federation tournament could advance to the NCAA tournament, Nov. 26-28 at the same site.

USC will rely on its star goalie, Andrew Tinseth, a 6-foot-4, 180-pound junior. Tinseth has 200 saves in 20 games, including a school-record 23 in a 7-6 overtime victory over California on Oct. 15. Ten of those saves were in overtime.

“We are there,” Tinseth said about the NCAA title. “We have a great chance. I think it’s just between us and Stanford.”

Stanford’s 18-3 record includes a loss to USC. The Trojans are 14-7, but have defeated fourth-ranked Cal four times. It is the first time the Trojans have defeated Cal since 1988, after 14 consecutive losses to the Bears.

USC is 1-3 against Stanford. But in the likely scenario that the teams meet twice more this season, for the federation title and for the NCAA championship, the Trojans could do more than even the score.

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Guy Baker, UCLA water polo coach, is looking forward to playing UC Irvine again.

The Bruins (12-7) play the Anteaters (14-7) in the first round of the federation tournament Saturday at 7 a.m. The winner probably will advance to the NCAA tournament. The loser probably will stay home.

But there’s more to the game than that for Baker. UCLA lost to Irvine in late October, 9-8.

That was two days after Baker’s wife, Laura, had been in a car accident, though she wasn’t injured, and one day after she had given birth to a 9-pound 10-ounce baby girl, Christin Lois, the couple’s second child. Naturally, Baker was distracted the last time the Bruins met the Anteaters. “I think I might do a better job of coaching,” he said.

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The two-time defending Big West champion Long Beach State women’s volleyball team has suddenly found itself in a battle for the conference championship.

UC Santa Barbara ended the 49ers’ record-tying streak of 38 conference victories on Oct. 16. Third-ranked Long Beach (21-2, 13-1 in conference play) trails fifth-ranked Santa Barbara (24-2, 15-0) by 1 1/2 games in the standings.

The teams will play at Long Beach tonight at 7:30.

The key for Long Beach Coach Brian Gimmillaro will be to get his team to win in the games in which they don’t play well.

The 49ers’ Danielle Scott leads the conference in hitting at .458 and is second in blocks, averaging 1.48 a game.

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The top-ranked UCLA women’s volleyball team (22-1, 13-1 in the Pacific 10 Conference) lost to 18th-ranked Arizona (14-8, 9-6) on Sunday, its first loss against the Wildcats since 1983. UCLA is 30-3 against Arizona.

The crowd of 2,676 at Arizona’s McKale Center was a school record for a women’s volleyball match.

Unlike last season, when UCLA was undefeated through the regular season before losing in the NCAA final to Stanford, the Bruins will head into the NCAA tournament having lost a game.

“It’s hard right now to say a loss is good for us,” said Bruin Coach Andy Banachowski. “But in the general scheme of things, I think it will help us refocus a little bit more on what our goals should be.”

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Even though the UCLA men’s soccer team has been seeded No. 1 in the West Region for the second consecutive year for the NCAA tournament, which begins this weekend, the Bruins still feel they have something to prove.

UCLA was not even in Soccer America’s preseason rankings.

What’s more, the Bruins, who won NCAA titles in 1985 and 1990, hope to finish better than they did last season, when they had a bye in the first round before losing to San Diego at home in the second round.

“Obviously, we want to go further than we did last year,” said Sigi Schmid, UCLA’s coach. “I think the thing that we’re looking at is not giving away our home-field advantage. Being at home means that we plan on winning at home.”

The Bruins (18-2) will play host to San Diego (13-6) Sunday at 1 p.m.

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Schools with big-time football programs are facing tough decisions in meeting federal guidelines mandating gender equity.

Consider UCLA, which added women’s water polo and eliminated men’s swimming and men’s gymnastics for next year and will add another women’s sport in 1997 in an effort to achieve equality.

UCLA currently conducts 12 men’s sports and 10 women’s. During the 1994-95 academic year, UCLA will offer 10 men’s sports and 11 women’s.

But participation rates, rather than the number of sports, are the key to gender equity, which is why major football schools, with their big squads, are having trouble.

At UCLA, for instance, 66% of the athletes are men and 34% are women. By 1997, with the addition of another women’s sport, the school hopes those numbers will be within five percentage points of equal participation.

UCLA athletic administrators will solicit information from existing clubs on campus to determine which women’s sport to add next.

Notes

Although UCLA is the Southland’s first NCAA Division I school to offer women’s water polo as an intercollegiate sport, there are eight other schools in California that offer the sport or will next year: UC San Diego, Claremont-Mudd, Occidental, Pomona-Pitzer, Redlands, Whittier, Stanford and Cal.