Long Beach State University
Stanford
Long Beach State Beats Stanford
2/28/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Water Polo
Oct. 21, 2007
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Junior Jake Kinne scored three goals and Long Beach State goalie Steve MacKenzie recorded a season-high 15 saves as sixth-ranked Long Beach State defeated No. 2-ranked Stanford 7-5 on Sunday afternoon at the Campus Pool. In the second game of the day the 49ers dropped a non-conference affair to tenth-ranked UC Davis (17-5), 9-8. Long Beach is not 14-8 on the season and Stanford falls to 8-5 and 1-2 in league play.
The 49ers won the game on the defensive end, allowing just five goals and limiting Stanford on its 6-5 man advantages. The Cardinal converted just once in five attempts when they had a man advantage. The 49ers converted of four of its six extra-man opportunities.
"Stanford is a very disciplined and intelligent team," said 49er Head Coach Gavin Arroyo. "I knew it would be a game of who made the fewest mistakes. Defensively we wanted to get a little more pressure on the ball, and it worked today."
After Stanford tied the game at 5-5 on a goal by Alex Pulido at 5:29, the 49ers shut down the Cardinal attack the rest of the game. Reid Tomassi scored his second goal of the day at 4:47 to put Long Beach up for good, 6-5. The 49ers scored an insurance goal at 0:58 as Kinne scored his third of the day on an extra-man goal.
MacKenzie recorded 15 saves, but 11 of those came in the second and third quarters where the Cardinal scored just one goal. The 49ers also got a lot of field blocks on the Cardinal. MacKenzie has now recorded double-digits in goalie saves in his last seven games.
Stanford jumped out to a 3-2 lead after one quarter as the teams traded goals. Will Hindle-Katel tallied at 7:30 to put Stanford up early 1-0. Senior Clint Wilson countered at 6:32 to tie the contest, but Andrew Drake's man-advantage goal at 1:32 put the Cardinal up 3-2 at the end of the initial stanza. The 49ers clamped down on the Cardinal offense while tallying two goals in the second quarter to take a 4-3 halftime lead. Tomassi scored at 4:00 and Kinne at 3:10 to give the Beach the lead. The two teams traded goals in the third quarter before the 49ers won the fourth quarter with two goals to Stanford's one.
In the late afternoon game against the Aggies, the 49ers never got in an offensive rhythm in the 9-8 loss. After Clint Wilson scored his second goal of the day with nine seconds remaining to tie the contest at 8-8, the Aggies scored with just over one second left on a deflected shot by Nick Arrigo. Arrigo's shot was defelected by a 49er field player and skipped past goalie Derek Weibe-Bailey into the cage. Gant Muenter led UC Davis with three goals. Davis goalie Mike McGee had 10 saves, three in the final quarter.
The 49er victory over Stanford snapped an 11-game losing skid to the Cardinal. The last 49er win over Stanford was in the 2000 campaign, an 11-8 win in Palo Alto. All-time, the win was just the ninth for Long Beach State in 65 games against the Cardinal. Long Beach then heads to Northern California next weekend for games at California (Oct. 27) and at Pacific (Oct. 28).
