STANFORD, Calif. – Stanford picked up a 15-9 win over UC Davis tonight, moving on to the NCAA Championship semifinal for the second-straight season. Ben Forer led the Cardinal attack with four goals, one of five Stanford players to record multiple goals.
“We did a great job, especially defensively we were awesome I thought,” said Dunlevie Family director of men’s water polo Brian Flacks. “They gave us a little bit of a run at the end of the second quarter, I thought in the third quarter we did a really good job cleaning things up.”
Ben Forer started the scoring for the Card, before Botond Balogh ripped off a pair of goals to make it 3-0 halfway through the first period. The Aggies responded with a pair of scored to cut it to one at 3-2, but Balogh scored his third of the period with a minute left to double the lead.
Forer added a pair in the second, joining Balogh with a hat trick as the Card took an 8-4 lead into the break.
Stanford’s offense kept the pace in the third, scoring four unanswered to take a 12-4 lead with two minutes left in the period. UC Davis would add a score to make it a 12-5 game heading into the final eight minutes.
The Card held onto the lead in the fourth, closing out the 15-9 win. West Temkin finished with four saves in the win.
The Cardinal moves on to the NCAA Championship semifinal tomorrow, taking on the second-seeded UCLA Bruins. The MPSF foes square off at 4:00 p.m. PT tomorrow, with the game streamed on NCAA.com. The winner books a trip to the final on Sunday, taking on the winner of USC and Fordham, which will be played tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. PT.
No. 3 Stanford vs. UC Davis
UCD 2 – 2 – 1 – 4 = 9
STAN 4 – 4 – 4 – 3 = 15
STAN Goals: B. Forer (4), B. Balogh (3), A. Gheorghe (2), G. Di Martire (2), W. Schneider (2), M. Zelikov, C. Arakelian
UCD Goals: T. Kiesling (2), M. Prokhin (2), M. Ruano (2), A. Ting, O. Viñas, A. Hitchcock