The men's water polo team won two of three matches this weekend, including two decisive victories over Iona College and Fordham Univer-sity, but it was Sunday's 12-9 home loss versus No. 14 St. Francis College - a perennial powerhouse of the Northern division - that was most important.
Despite a second-half surge that brought the Bears within reach of victory, Brown ended up on the losing end, as it allowed St. Francis to jump to an 8-3 halftime lead that proved insurmountable.
"We came out a little soft, a little intimidated to start the game, and we made some mistakes under pressure that we don't normally make," said Head Coach Jason Gall.
The possible intimidation was due to the fact that the Terriers are one of the bigger, more physical teams in the division. They have proven themselves time and again, with performances that include a runner-up finish in last year's Eastern Championships. Last year's Brown squad lost to St. Francis in a less competitive 13-6 match, as did the 2003 team by a score of 9-3.
But this year's team has more size than last, and it had been playing solidly prior to the match as evidenced by its 7-1 record. So it was disappointing that a number of Brown defensive miscues, particularly in the second quarter in which St. Francis outscored Brown 4-0, were mostly to blame for the loss, according to co-captain Andy Wiener '06.
"Things were falling apart; we were blowing coverage on guys, getting confused on defense. It was costing us goals," Wiener said. "Give St. Francis credit - they were doing some things offensively that were working - but we were not guarding the people we needed to be guarding."
Brown found itself behind 2-0 within the first minute of the game, but it was able to rebound on a goal from Grant LeBeau '09 on an extra-man opportunity. The teams then traded goals to close out the first quarter, with scores by Luke Samson '07 and Mike Gartner '09, and the score stood at 4-3.
Then the floodgates opened.
By the 2:00 mark in the second quarter, St. Francis had tacked on four more goals, due in part to the aforementioned defensive breakdowns, as well as some Brown foul trouble. The gap could have been even worse, but goalkeeper and co-captain Jay Fantone '06 made some stops to keep Brown in the game, including a crucial save on a St. Francis counter-attack that followed a near-goal for Brown. On the offensive end, Brown was having trouble finding the net, as it could not capitalize on a few 6-on-5 chances, and at one point, had three consecutive shots hit the cage.
"Our shot selection, when and how to shoot the ball, placement of our shots - these are probably some of the major things we need to work on," Gall said. "Sometimes we think too much, we try to overanalyze where we're supposed to put the ball."
Facing such a large deficit, Brown needed to make good use of the halftime period.
"Basically, we just wanted to make sure nobody gave up on that game," Wiener said. "This team in years previous might have given up if down five goals at halftime."
Brown came out firing to start the third quarter, scoring two goals within the first minute to make the score 8-5. By the end of the quarter, the score was 11-8, despite a questionable game ejection of Stu Thompson '07 for excessively physical play and a near-catastrophic breakdown to end the quarter, in which Fantone made a save on a shot at point blank range.
But the Bears' momentum was halted during the fourth quarter. Despite continued team strength on the defensive end by Brown and a determined individual performance by Fantone, there were a number of missed opportunities on offense.
The score was 12-8 from the 6:00 mark until five seconds before the final buzzer, when LeBeau scored his third of the match, but it was too little too late.
The Bears did, however, defeat Fordham earlier in the day by a score of 16-2, exactly one year to the day after beating them 15-3. Gartner tallied five goals to lead Brown.
And on Saturday, Brown was able to knock off Iona College by a score of 9-3 on the strength of its defense. Holding Iona to only one goal through three quarters, the Bears went into the fourth with an eight-goal lead and had effectively put the match out of reach.
"We've been playing incredible defense generally," Gall said. "Iona has played some teams in the south really well, but they haven't won a game yet. So we really focused on the defense, and had a lot of counter attack transition goals."
The Bears next travel to Princeton, N.J. for the ECAC Championships this coming weekend.
