USC, Irvine Upset in Overtime

Early three-goal leads followed by prolonged slumps and some nifty passing by their opponents in overtime were the formula for disaster for the two top-seeded teams Saturday during semifinal play of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation water polo tournament at Newport Harbor High.

USC, ranked No. 1 in the country, lost to third-ranked Stanford, 7-6, in sudden-death overtime and UC Irvine, ranked No. 4 in the nation but seeded second in the tournament because of its conference record, lost to No. 6 Pepperdine, 6-5, in overtime.

The Trojans (22-3) will almost certainly get the one at-large berth to the NCAA championships next Friday and Sunday at Corona del Mar High. The winner of today’s 2:30 MPSF title game between the Cardinal and the Waves will earn the conference’s automatic berth and join UMass, UC San Diego and USC in the four-team NCAA field.

Stanford trailed, 3-0, after three minutes, but when senior David Hay flicked a pass through traffic to Andy Walburger, who reached up and redirected the ball into a high corner of the net with 37 seconds remaining in the first sudden-death period, it lifted the Cardinal (19-6) to victory.

It was a play Stanford Coach Dante Dettamanti says “has never worked in practice in the four years he’s been trying it.” “It’s something we work on all the time in practice and Coach always says, ‘That never goes in,’ ” said Hay, who graduated from Foothill High. “Turns out it was our secret play. But it doesn’t mean anything if we don’t win [today].”

The same can be said for the overtime heroics of Pepperdine (13-10).

UC Irvine (19-7) grabbed a 3-0 lead in the first six minutes, but the Anteaters went almost 16 minutes without scoring and needed Dan Klatt’s steal and length-of-the-pool scoring drive with 24 seconds left in regulation to tie the score.

Both goalies--Pepperdine’s Merrill Moses and Irvine’s Genai Kerr--made a number of excellent saves in overtime before the Waves’ Sean Hylton whipped a pass to Todd King, whose shot from four meters beat Kerr with 42 seconds left in the second overtime period.

The Waves held the conference’s top scorer, Ryan Bailey, without a goal. Bailey, who Pepperdine Coach Terry Schroeder calls the “greatest offensive threat in collegiate water polo,” scored six times against Pacific in the first round Friday and had not been held scoreless since Oct. 24 during a loss to USC.

“Our defense has been playing great and our goal was to stop him,” said Christian Jensen, a graduate of Laguna Beach High who was one of a gang of Waves to descend on Bailey when he tried to position himself in front of the Pepperdine net. “He’s so strong and so quick that if he gets the ball in his grasp, it’s going in the net.”

Irvine Coach Ted Newland wasn’t faulting Bailey, though.

“He can’t score if we don’t get him the ball,” Newland said. “Our inability to capitalize on our extra-man opportunities is what killed us. We were two-for-13 against UOP [Friday] and one-for-six [Saturday]. They did a pretty good job of protecting two meters, but they could afford to foul Bailey all day because we couldn’t do anything when we were a man up.

“We got up 3-0 and we didn’t do [anything] after that.”

In MPSF consolation semifinal games:

UCLA 8, Pacific 5--UCLA Coach Guy Baker was ejected after kicking a chair in disgust, but the second-ranked Bruins got five goals from Sam Grayeli (Costa Mesa High) and outscored the seventh-ranked Tigers, 5-1, in the second half to rally for the victory.

California 9, Long Beach State 7--Ryan Flynn scored four goals and Peter Kiefer had seven saves as the fifth-ranked Golden Bears beat the eighth-ranked 49ers.