Can home pool advantage leads to a 1st NCAA title for No.3 Cal Women's Water Polo this weekend?

No.10 Cal Women's Tennis battles No.7 Georgia in Super Regional on Friday afternoon

The busy month of postseason action continues across Cal Athletics.

Leading the way this weekend is the historic first NCAA Women’s Water Polo Championships to be hosted at Spiekers Aquatic Complex in Berkeley. Cal Women’s Tennis, meanwhile, has to travel across the country and battle graduation traffic at Georgia for the right to advance as a team to the NCAA Women’s Tennis Elite Eight, to take place in Stillwater, Oklahoma this year.

We will also recap the recently concluded NCAA postseason runs of No.7 Cal Beach Volleyball and Cal Women’s Golf.

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No.3 Cal Women’s Water Polo in NCAA Championships

Where: Spieker Aquatics Complex (Berkeley, CA)

NCAA Quarterfinal: Cal (17-6) takes on Fresno State (21-7) on Friday, 6 PM PT

NCAA Semifinal: Saturday, 7 PM PT

NCAA Final: Sunday, 7 PM PT

Live Stream: NCAA.com (Quarterfinals and Semifinals), ESPNU/ESPN+ (Championship Final)

Live Stats: 6-8 Sports

Even with Cal Aquatics being the dominant force in college water sports over the past two decades, Cal Women’s Water Polo remains the lone program in the four Cal-sponsored aquatic sports without an NCAA national championship. Yet 2024 looks like a golden opportunity to have that historic breakthrough between the other top programs being negatively impacted by Olympic year sabbaticals and Berkeley being the site of the NCAA Championships. We shall find out if this will be a memorable weekend for the program by Sunday night.

When current head coach Coralie Simmons took over the program eight years ago, the hope was for Cal to be better tapped into the U.S. National Team pipeline. Although Cal has yet to have current players on the U.S. Senior Team, the squad of former U.S. Junior players may finally pay off in this Olympic year, when Olympic duties put Stanford’s current women’s water polo dynasty on pause. Unlike the last few Olympic years, when Cal’s top players were International Olympians who also had to take a sabbatical, the 2024 season sees Cal Golden Bears ready to take advantage of the vacuum left by those preparing for the Paris Olympics.

https://twitter.com/CalWWPolo/status/1788676957129023565

The calling card for this Cal team is its strong defense, led by senior goalkeeper Isabel Williams who recently became Cal’s all-time saves leader. Williams can be a game-changer in front of the cage, but Cal Bears also play a very defensive brand of water polo in pace. Opponents have only reached double digits in goals three times all season long.

https://twitter.com/CalWWPolo/status/1788022885308878946

Offensively, Cal is a lot more limited. Senior Maryn Dempsey and transfer (from UC Irvine) Elena “Nina” Flynn have led the way with 42 and 41 goals, respectively. Continuing the legacy of Kitty Lynn Joustra (who will be a 1st-time “Calympian” this summer), Cal got great production from Dutch freshman center Feline Voordouw who has contributed 30 goals. This is a purr-fect place to make a cat pun, but I don’t want to Dutch it. Another Dutch player junior Rozanne Voorvelt is tied with senior Maddie DeMattia with 22 goals apiece.

Almost all of the key players for Cal are upperclassmen with a lot of experience. In addition to Williams and Dempsey, Cal typically starts senior defender Mallory Reynoso and senior attacker Reagan Whitney. They know what is at stake despite this group not making it past the NCAA semifinals.

Bears relied on Flynn early in the season and she responded with some big four-goal games. Yet there are often long stretches of a match where the Cal offense does nothing: they frustratingly do not even get a good shot off due to some slow passing or passive attacks. To be fair, the majority of the Cal Women’s Water Polo matches that I watched this year, including the frustrating loss at USC in person, were against top teams.

In recent weeks, Cal avenged their two early season losses to Stanford (one in double OT) with two dominant victories: 11-6 at Stanford in the Big Splash and then 10-4 in the MPSF semifinal. A slow start in the MPSF Championship Final against UCLA made that loss (10-13 on paper but that’s only after Cal outscored UCLA by a lot in the second half) noncompetitive but Cal’s 6-7 loss in Berkeley on April 13th was arguably UCLA’s closest win this year.

With perhaps wishful thinking on my part, I just do not find this undefeated UCLA team to be that historically dominant. The Bruins have a very balanced attack (15 players with double-digit goals compared to 9 for the Bears) and a game-altering goaltender in Lauren Steele. On the other hand, the Bruins have not won the NCAA Championships since 2009, finishing as the national runner-up four times since winning seven of the first nine titles.

Anyhow, there will be more times to write about a potential rematch against them. Cal will open on Friday night against No.9 Fresno State. Cal played Fresno State twice already in 2024, winning 9-5 in the neutral pool of Irvine, CA in the Barbara Kalbus Invitational in February and then 10-6 in Fresno a month later in March.

Should the Golden Bears avoid an upset to Fresno State, they will take on the winner between No.2 Hawaii and Princeton in the second semifinal on Saturday. Cal did lose 7-10 to Hawaii in the Barbara Kalbus Invitational in late February but avenged that loss a couple of weeks later with a 9-8 win in Berkeley.

UCLA, Stanford, and USC are the only schools to have won the NCAA Women’s Water Polo Championship. They are all on the other half of the NCAA bracket. In the play-in round, Wagner edged Biola (yes, both of these are real schools) 15-14 to earn the right to be crushed by the undefeated, top-seed UCLA first thing on Friday. UCLA, barring a monumental upset of epic proportion, will take on the winner between No.4 Stanford and USC in the first semifinal on Saturday at 2 PM PT.

Even with an undefeated UCLA team in the field, this year’s NCAA Women’s Water Polo Championship feels more open than ever. The last two times when the Cal Men’s Water Polo hosted the NCAA Championships, the Golden Bears won the NCAA title. It is time for this Cal Women’s Water Polo team to make their marks in program history!

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No.10 Cal Women’s Tennis rolls through the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament

NCAA Round of 16 (AKA “Super Regional”): No.10 Cal (20-6) at No.7 Georgia (22-4)

Where: Athens, Georgia

When: Friday, May 10th, 1 PM PT

Cal Bears will take on Georgia today for the right to advance to the NCAA Championships in Stillwater, Oklahoma as a team. Several Cal Bears have already booked their spots in the singles and doubles championships that will take place after the team championships have concluded.

Last weekend, Cal (20-6) looked impressive in beating Sacramento State and No.17 Auburn both by a 4-0 score.

https://twitter.com/CalWomensTennis/status/1788680808720732392

Against Sacramento State, Cal won the doubles point with 6-1 and 6-4 wins on No.1 and No.3 pairs. Golden Bears then quickly won in straight sets with Hannah Viller Moeller winning 6-0, 6-0 at No.2 singles, Berta Passola Folch winning 6-0, 6-2 on No.5 singles, and Valentina Ivanov clinching the win with a 6-0, 6-4 victory on No.1 singles.

After a rain delay, Cal faced a much tougher contest against Auburn in the second round. The doubles point came down to a tie-breaker in court No.2 where Jessica Alsola and Katja Wiersholm prevailed 7-2. The singles went Cal’s way easier with straight-set wins on No.5 singles (Berta Passola Folch), No.6 singles (Lan Mi), and No.1 singles (Valentina Ivanov). Ivanov, ranked 44th in the country, clinched the win with an upset over the 9th-ranked Ansari of Auburn.

The impressive win over Auburn should give the Bears plenty of confidence going into today’s dual at another SEC foe in Georgia. Georgia Bulldogs won 4-0 over Alabama State before a 4-1 win over No.20 Florida State. Coincidentally, one of their loss this year was a 3-4 decision to Auburn. Georgia is a perfect 10-0 at home this season.

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Cal Beach Volleyball: the season ended at the NCAA Quarterfinals for the second straight year

Although there was a lot of turnover on the roster between 2023 and 2024, the NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship played out quite like last year.

No.7 Cal faced Long Beach State in the first round just like last year. Golden Bears earned their second-ever NCAA Championships win by again defeating Long Beach State in the first round.

https://twitter.com/CalBeachVB/status/1788354120593858877

Just like last year, Cal faced UCLA in the second round. UCLA stayed perfect against Cal in the short-ish beach volleyball all-time history

UCLA eventually lost the NCAA Championship final to USC, just like in 2023.

Ultimately, Cal could use a better regular season to perhaps earn a more favorable matchup (AKA avoiding UCLA/USC until the semifinal round) to improve on their NCAA Tournament advancement next season. The rapid roster turnover across collegiate beach volleyball makes any prediction now useless. The three straight trips to the NCAA Championships should surely help with recruiting.

Nonetheless, back-to-back NCAA quarterfinal berths show that the program is progressing in the correct direction, even if the marginal improvement near the top is increasingly more difficult.

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Cal Women’s Golf ends the Nancy McDaniel era

Cal Women’s Golf had its season end at the Las Vegas Regional this past week. Bears could not overcome a poor first round to finish in the top-5 and advance to the NCAA Championships in Carlsbad, CA.

https://twitter.com/CalWGolf/status/1788349066533040377

Two Cal Bears did finish in the top 20, including the remarkable freshman Constance Fouillet at 18th. She ended her program record-breaking season with a scoring average of 72.7, besting Katherine Zhu’s 73.6 record from 2018-19.

Senior Rina Tatematsu had a great 3rd round to finish 13th overall.

This also marks the end of the Nancy McDaniel era for Cal Women’s Golf. McDaniel is the only head coach in program history but has announced her retirement after 23 years at the helm of the program that she built. She will be inducted into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame this fall.

https://twitter.com/CalWGolf/status/1788349599608086601

With McDaniel taking time away from the team this summer to undergo chemotherapy after the return of cancer, Cal responded to her return with a strong fall season including winning three straight competitions for the first time. Cal could not quite recapture that magic this spring, but consistency is always a challenge in golf, regardless of what level.

I would not be surprised if Cal would promote from within to fill the coaching hole left by McDaniel. The current Associate Head Coach Beverly Terry has been at Cal for nine seasons.

GO BEARS!