May 15, 2010

Updated 2010 NCAA bracket

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. -

The No. 4 ranked California women's water polo battled top-seed Stanford to a 3-3 tie after two periods, but was outscored 3-0 in the second half and fell to the Cardinal, 6-3, in the 2010 NCAA Women's Water Polo National Championship semifinal Saturday (May 15) at the Aztec Aquaplex in San Diego. The Golden Bears (25-9), who will play for a national third-place finish Sunday at 3:15 p.m. against Loyola Marymount (10-6 loser to USC in the other semifinal), were led by freshman Dana Ochsner's two goals and eight saves from sophomore goalie Stephanie Peckham.

Cal did a nice job of competing with tournament favorite Stanford through the first 16 minutes of the match, outscoring the Cardinal, 2-1, in the second period to end the first half tied at 3-3. Ochsner, who had a team-high three goals on Friday in the Bears' 12-8 win over Michigan, had two of the team's three goals and Peckham notched seven first half saves. Senior Meghan Corso was the other Cal scorer in the opening two quarters and now has 169 career goals (fourth on the Cal all-time scoring list) after tallying a pair of goals Friday against the Wolverines.

"First of all, I would like to wish Stanford luck in the national championship game," said Cal coach Richard Corso. "They're a good team and obviously they battled hard against us. I think the difference in the second half was our power play situation. I'm not sure, but I think (Stanford was) 0-for-10 on 6-on-5 and we were 2-for-11. Clearly if we had taken advantage of our opportunities and put the ball in the cage on our 6-on-5's, the game would have been tighter. We would have been up going into the fourth quarter. That hurt us a little bit, but I thought our defense was good. They scored a couple of naturals on us that I thought for us were soft goals. That's just the way the ball bounced today.

"This (playing for third place Sunday) is epic. Cal has never been to the NCAA championships. When I got here, the program was in crisis. We've been able to work and get better each year. Our theme over the past 16 months has been to get better each day and the girls have gotten better. That's what we're going to keep trying to do. For Cal, the worst we can do is fourth place in the country. I'm proud of that. I told the girls that it hurts and it's tough right now. But we're going to sit out there and watch the (USC-Loyola Marymount) game because we play the loser and we want to go home with a piece of hardware."

Other NCAA women's water polo tournament results Saturday included No. 3-seed UCLA defeating No. 7-seed Marist, 14-3, and No. 5-seed Michigan defeating No. 8-seed Pomona-Pitzer, 11-3.

The Bears' win Friday against Michigan was their first NCAA tournament match in school history. Prior to women's water polo being an NCAA sport, Cal had competed in the National Collegiate Women's Water Polo Championship tournament from 1996-2000, finishing as national runners-up in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

Cal 1-2-0-0--3
Stanford 2-1-2-1--6

Cal goals: Dana Ochsner 2, Meghan Corso

Stanford goals: Melissa Seidemann, Alex Koran,
Pallivi Menon, Kim Krueger, Cassie Churnside

Cal goal saves: Stephanie Peckham 8

Stanford goalie saves: Amber Oland 12