Cal Water Polo: Second-Ranked Bears Topple No. 1 Stanford for 1st Time Since 2017

`That's always a great game for any Cal sports team' - Coach Kirk Everist

The Cal men’s water polo team scored its second victory this season over a No. 1-ranked team on Sunday, beating rival Stanford 16-11 for the first time since 2017.

For coach Kirk Everist, who has led the Bears to three NCAA championships, it was a nice early-season result but only a step along the season’s path.

“Stanford’s got a solid team. We’re all sort of feeling each other out at this point in this abbreviated season,” he said. “I thought our guys came out and played a couple solid quarters in the middle — our first quarter wasn’t awesome, but the second and third we got on a roll offensively, were really sharing the ball.

“Defensively, we were really active. We were able to shut down some of the scoring opportunities and windows they had, and our goalie was able to play pretty well as well.”

Eight players scored for the second-ranked Bears (5-2) against Stanford, led by junior Jack Deely, who had four goals and has totaled 10 goals and 11 assists through seven games.

Cal's Jack Deely, right, celebrates scoring against Stanford / Photo by Catharyn Hayne

Sophomore Garrett Dunn contributed three goals and three assists, Nikolaos Papanikolaou and freshman Tommy Kennedy had two goals apiece and sophomore goalkeeper Adrian Weinberg made a season-high 15 saves while limiting the Cardinal to a season-low 11 goals.

The win capped a weekend at USC where the Bears played once each against Stanford, USC and UCLA. Cal is 5-2 so far this season and earlier scored a win over a Trojans' team that was No. 1 at the time.

The Bears hadn’t beaten Stanford since the quarterfinals of the 2017 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament.

“That’s always a great game for any Cal sports team. That’s our rival, as well as SC and UCLA,” Everist said. “This kind of weekend with the format we have this year is kind of fun where there’s no day off.”

Everist says his team “has a lot of potential,” still young but with more seasoning than a year ago when seven freshmen were part of the rotation.

The squad’s key player is Papanikolaou, a 6-foot-2, 250-pound sophomore from Greece, who led the Bears last season with 51 goals and was the only freshman named to the All-MPSF first team. Papanikolaou was the 2018 Junior World MVP while leading the Greek National team to a gold medal at Youth World Championships in Hungary.

“He’s a handful. He’s tough to stop and he’s one of those players who defenses really have to scheme against,” Everist said. “And if our other players can come together and play well on the perimeter we have a really good shot.”

It helps that Papanikolaou can be given a break by talented freshman George Avakian, a 6-2, 250-pounder, who was a high school All-American at Harvard-Westlake.

“He is proving to be a force in there as well. So Nikos doesn’t have to play the whole game at that position, which is very difficult,” Everist said. “It gives us some ability to move people around, play different people at the same time, gives us different looks. I think we have a solid team.”

Everist explains in the video below how he and his coaching counterparts scheduled their abbreviated season:

The weekend at USC was the second of three scheduled round-robin events between the powerhouse programs from the MPSF.

The four California schools, which have combined to win every NCAA title since 1998, played a weekend set of games at Cal late last month, again at USC this weekend and will gather at Stanford in two weeks.

Seeding for the MPSF tournament will be based on the results of the six matches each team plays at USC and Stanford. The Cal event is designated as a preseason event because Stanford was on a COVID pause and could not participate.

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Cover photo of Cal's Nikolaos Papanikolaou by Catharyn Hayne

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo