Sailors put scare into Mater Dei
CORONA DEL MAR — Their title chances dashed in the final minutes Saturday afternoon, the members of the Newport Harbor High boys’ water polo team still left the CdM pool with their heads held high.
Winning the South Coast Tournament was not in the cards. Top-seeded Mater Dei, the two-time defending tournament champions and two-time defending CIF Southern Section Division 1 champions, rallied for a 7-4 win. But the Sailors perhaps still walked off the deck with a different kind of victory.
“It’s a great moral victory,” Newport Harbor senior goalie Wyatt Muller said. “It gives us a lot of confidence.”
Mater Dei has now won 59 straight CIF Southern Section matches, dating back to 2010. In very few of them have the Monarchs (10-0) been pushed like they were Saturday against the Sailors (7-1).
After earning a physical 9-8 victory over Loyola just three hours earlier, Newport Harbor Coach Robert Lynn said he was worried about fatigue against Mater Dei. Instead, the Sailors came out hot.
Two team captains delivered. Seniors Preston Lee and Dan Stevens scored on the Sailors’ first two possessions, giving Newport the early advantage. The Sailors were still up, 3-2, at halftime, after senior Henry McNamara scored a six-on-five goal just before intermission. K.J. Kelley drew the exclusion.
The Sailors were playing extremely well. They would finish the game with seven field blocks, three each by Stevens and Curtis Fink. They held Mater Dei scoreless on four six-on-five opportunities.
“I don’t know if it was the best game [of the season], but I would say it was the best defensive effort,” Lynn said. “The effort that we put in to try to control the pace ... we held those guys to seven goals. So yeah, I would say it was our best effort on defense, but there’s a lot more room to improve.”
Mater Dei rallied to a 4-3 lead after three quarters on goals by Matt Cuozzo and Kent Inoue. But Sailors senior center Andrew Silvers scored with 6:02 left in the game, knotting the score at 4-4.
Silvers played against his younger brother, Nick, who is a sophomore on Mater Dei. Other Newport-Mesa residents on Mater Dei include Jon and James Walters, Jeff O’Brien, Neil LeVecke, Connor Talleur and Carter Yonkers.
Stevens excelled defensively on his old friend Jon Walters, a senior center who is bound for USC, for much of the game. Muller said the Sailors were able to effectively run a 4-5 drop defense.
“Today, we were like, ‘We’ve got to show each other we can play as a team, play together,’” Muller said. “And that’s just what we did; we played as a team. In the end, it didn’t go our way, but it just shows us we can get there.”
Mater Dei Coach Chris Segesman said Walters is the best high school center “by far.” He also has the player generally considered the best high school goalie, junior McQuin Baron, who made 12 saves against Newport Harbor.
Jon Walters, who drew all four Newport Harbor exclusions, was active late. After Cuozzo scored from the right wing to give Mater Dei back the lead, Walters scored a backhand goal with 1:23 left to increase the advantage to 6-4. Lynn, standing on the sidelines, even applauded the shot.
Baron made a save on Stevens’ long shot with just under a minute left, then Jon Walters scored again. He took the pass from his brother and converted, giving Mater Dei its seventh and final goal.
Segesman could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
“We struggled to put away our opportunities,” Segesman said. “We had some wide-open opportunities, we had three or four six-on-fives that came up empty. You know, that’s scary. Newport’s a well-balanced team, they played smart and they took away a lot of our counterattack [and had] great shot-blocking ... We made that run at the end where we started putting away the opportunities, and that was the difference.”
Fink and Mitch Mendoza led the Sailors with two steals each. Muller, who had a strong tournament overall, made nine saves.
The Sailors will not see Mater Dei again until they play in the regular-season finale, scheduled for Nov. 3. They expect to again be ready to compete.
“For me, I feel like this is a better team than last year,” Lynn said. “They’re more a collective group, working together better. It’s all for one and one for all.”
Fink, Mendoza, Silvers and Stevens each scored twice in the semifinal win over Loyola, which was back-and-forth throughout. It was not secured until the final seconds, when a Loyola pass went off the end line.
Just prior to that, Muller made the last and biggest of his 13 saves, denying Loyola senior Chancellor Ramirez on a shot from right in front of the goal with 23 seconds left.
“Huge,” Lynn said of the save. “[Ramirez] got inside water and he’s pushing off looking for the ball. He’s a strong kid and a good player … He didn’t make the shot, so that was a good thing. It was good enough defense to survive, but we’ve got to work on all that stuff.”
Ramirez led Loyola with four goals, but didn’t score in the second half. Fink also drew six exclusions against the Cubs, who went on to drop the tournament’s third-place game, 10-8, to Los Alamitos. The Sailors struggled on the six-on-five in the semifinal, converting just two of nine opportunities.
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Corona del Mar finished seventh in the tournament after defeating Dana Hills, 16-8. Earlier Saturday, the Sea Kings (4-3) lost to Long Beach Wilson by a goal for the second time this week. They fell, 8-7, in sudden death in a fifth-place semifinal as Bruins senior Jackson Kimbell scored on a counterattack.
Danny Marshall, Reid Chase and Jake Wyatt each scored three goals against Dana Hills. Chase also scored four goals against Wilson, and goalie Patrick McKenzie made six saves in both games.
The Dana Hills contest was impressive, as CdM ended the game on a 12-3 run.
“That was probably the best defense we played all tournament,” Chase said. “We started playing for each other ... that was huge. We started making the extra pass on offense. It all started with defense, though.
“We know we can score goals. We just need to get our defense going, and that’s our emphasis right now.”
Twitter: @mjszabo
