UNIVERSITY BEAT / LONNIE WHITE : After Dropping a Notch, USC Again at the Top in Water Polo

For most of September, USC stood alone as the best water polo team in the nation, thanks to the Trojans’ Croatian connection of Mateo Juric, Hrvoje Cizmic, Simun Cimerman and Marko Zagar.

Then on Sept. 23, Corbin Graham scored three goals as UCLA upset USC, 10-9, dropping the previously unbeaten Trojans into a co-No.1 ranking with Stanford.

Last weekend, USC bounced back by winning the two-day NorCal tournament at Berkeley. In the championship game Sunday night, the Trojans defeated Stanford, 14-13, in overtime, thanks to a key two-point goal by Cizmic and five goals by Juric. Goalie Brendan Grubbs, who had nine saves in the final, Juric and Zagar were named to the all-tournament team.

“The UCLA loss was just one thing that happens in college sports where on any given day any team can be beaten,” said USC Coach John Williams, who works as an accountant during the day. “We had to look at it as a wake-up call and if it wasn’t, we weren’t as good as we thought we were.”

With the tournament triumph, the Trojans, 10-1 overall and 1-1 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, regained sole possession of the No. 1 spot.

“Winning the tournament was extremely important to us, in light of the UCLA loss,” Williams said.

A big reason for the Trojans’ success the last three years has been the play of their Croatian players, who were recruited by Jovan Vavic, USC’s co-coach and a former member of a club that was a four-time national champion of Yugoslavia in the 1970s.

USC, runner-up in the NCAA tournament the last two seasons, will be tested again this weekend when the Trojans travel north for a rematch at Stanford Friday and play at California on Saturday.

*

UCLA’s women’s volleyball team has two big matches this weekend at Pauley Pavilion, against USC and Long Beach State. The Bruins last weekend swept Oregon and Oregon State to improve to 8-3 overall and 4-2 in the Pacific 10 Conference.

Junior middle blocker Kim Krull had 24 kills against Oregon and 19 against Oregon State. Krull leads the Pac-10 with 1.45 blocks a game.

The Bruins, who will play USC Friday night at 7, have not lost to the Trojans since 1987 and have won 15 consecutive matches against their Pac-10 rival.

Long Beach State, which will play UCLA for the first time since 1992 on Saturday, continues to be plagued with injuries. The 49ers lost standout freshman setter Misty May indefinitely with a dislocated right shoulder last week, after earlier having lost right-side hitter Kristin Harris because of a knee injury.

Without May, the 49ers dropped to 9-2 overall after losing at the Pyramid to UC Santa Barbara, 15-10, 7-15, 15-9, 10-15, 15-8, on Saturday.

Notes

The USC men’s golf team won the Fresno State Classic last weekend and Brian Hull finished in a three-way tie for second place overall with a six-under-par 210. Tying Hull were Michael Walton of Pepperdine and Trevor Arts of UCLA. Pepperdine finished third in team scoring. . . . After getting off to its best start since 1984 with a 9-1 record and then losing three in a row, the Pepperdine women’s volleyball team regrouped with victories last week over Gonzaga and Portland. . . . Julie Wilhoit, Loyola Marymount’s first-year women’s basketball coach, has added Doug Lloyd as an assistant along with Lynn Flanagan. . . . The UCLA men’s tennis team will have two transfers this season, Srdjan Muskatirovic from Miami of Florida and Jason Thompson from Kentucky. Both were No. 1 singles and doubles players and are eligible to play this season.