Saturday’s match
Division II quarterfinals
Riverside Poly (19-9) vs. Long Beach Wilson (15-12) at Long Beach State, 3 p.m.
Prediction: Belmont Plaza isn’t available for this tilt but Long Beach State gives me an old-school feel for this match. The Bruins will create a little magic in the first Division II voyage and will upset fourth-seeded Poly in overtime. LBW has the speed on the counterattack to get some high percentage shots on RSP goalie Gavyn Wild. RSP won the teams’ earlier encounter, 13-12, but the Bruins book a semifinal date with Mater Dei and former Long Beach State star Chris Segesman.
I’m not really sure why the feeling exist that LBW is fast on counter. I watched our team and several others play Wilson, and no where did I see the speed of Wilson past present itself.
Coach Martino of LBW was upset about being bumped (in his opinion) down to div II, but I watched div I’s Foothill pretty much steamroll them at home. I see Wilson as a quater final team at best. If they make it to Mater Dei, the door will slam there. We just lost to Mater Die 13-4 and we lost to Wilson 8-6 due largely to weak goal tending.
Having a player on the L. B. Millikan team who has played Wilson on numerous occasions, I found their speed pretty average. I believe thier success hinges on Coach Martinos ability to quickly spot weaknesses of other teams field players and exploiting them.
I think that option is more or less going to disappear when better oposition becomes a factor as the better teams advance. There are not too many surprises so far, and I would suspect that the LBW vs RSP game will end the same as the last, with Poly scoring one or two more goals than the last meeting.
mr. Shawn Larson
Obviously you wouldn’t see a good counterattack when we have to play your team in a small pool with bad reffs who never let the game be played as it was intended. you might want to check up on that. We’ll see who’s speed is average, when swim season comes around. now that your super star Isac Howell is gone who from milkan stands a chance?
As for the waterpolo, wilson has done exaclty what they had hoped to do:
win moore league
and
win at least one playoff game.
as for your statement about us not being able to beat Mater Dei, on what evidence are you making that statement?
We never even played them this year. just because they are ranked higher than us doesn’t mean that they are better. Harvard Westlake is a DIV I team and we beat them this summer. As for the game agianst foothill, i’m not sure i would have used the word “steamrolled”. it was a fairly good game.
This season has proven that wilson is still able to compete with the favorites and is making steps toward being back up there at the top.
and by the way,
what a LINUS statement when you say your loss was mostly due to weak goal tending. you guys had a huge advantage with your biased refs, tiny pool, and dirty playing; especially with that “beef” kid who cried his eyes out after loosing. I’d say your team definitely had the upper hand.
Unfortunately LBC, you don’t like losing. Poly was obviously the better team even with unbiased refs, a large clean pool and Wilsons dirty playing. Sorry.