Men’s basketball
TuAnh Dam, Sports editor
Just one week left until postseason play begins and every team is trying to get one last good impression in before Selection Sunday.
Oregon escaped two close games against California and Stanford with Dillon Brooks’ clutch play down the stretch. The Ducks are projected to be a two-seed in the West per ESPN’s Joe Lunardi’s bracketology.
Arizona, which just dropped a game to UCLA, fell to the number three seed in the Midwest while the Bruins jumped from four to three in the South.
Cal and USC round out the Pac-12’s teams in the NCAA as 11 seeds in the East and West respectively. But all five teams will have one last chance to boost their seedings with big wins in the conference tournament.
Baseball
David Gottlieb, assistant Sports editor
Three Pac-12 teams made the cut for D1Baseball.com’s Preseason Top 25, and all three have been able to hold onto their spots after the first two weeks of the season.
Oregon State remains the only Pac-12 team in the top 10. The Beavers started the season at No. 8 and went 7-1, playing two games each against four unranked teams: Indiana, Duke, Nebraska and Ohio State. Oregon State is now the No. 7 team in the country, and the highest-ranked team in the Pac-12.
Stanford and Arizona started the season at No. 18 and No. 19 respectively, but that gap has widened following the first eight games of the season.
The Wildcats, runners-up in the College World Series last year, picked up a pair of four-game sweeps against Eastern Kentucky and McNeese State to start their season 8-0 and earn a No. 14 ranking.
The Cardinal faced the toughest challenge to start the season of the three ranked Pac-12 teams and dropped two out of three to No. 12 Cal State Fullerton. Stanford won its next five games to end up at No. 19 in D1Baseball.com’s list.
Meanwhile, UCLA has gone 4-4, playing all of its games against unranked teams.
“I told somebody the other day,” said UCLA coach John Savage. “We’ve played San Jose (State) and (UC) Riverside and Gonzaga, and everybody probably from the outside says, ‘Boy, you know, those teams, they’re just okay.'”
Savage went on to point out that UCR took two of three from Fresno State, and that San Jose State beat BYU twice.
“These guys are going to beat people,” Savage added.
Men’s tennis
Hanson Wang, assistant Sports editor
The Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s second edition of computerized rankings came out Tuesday, and four Pac-12 teams remain in the top 25.
UCLA men’s tennis (8-3) rose four spots from No. 15 to No. 11 after defeating Stanford (6-3) 4-2 on Saturday, while California (7-1) held its spot as the top-ranked Pac-12 team, albeit dropping one spot to No. 7. The Bears defeated the UC Davis Aggies 4-1 in the first leg of a Sunday doubleheader, but Cal also needed a three-set comeback from junior Billy Griffith to escape with a 4-3 victory over UC Santa Barbara in the second leg.
USC rose two spots to No. 10 in the rankings following a pair of 4-3 wins over Cal Poly and Stanford last Thursday and Friday, respectively. Against the Mustangs, sophomore Jack Jaede clinched the match with a straight-sets win at court four. Sophomore Logan Smith was the hero versus the Cardinal, earning the Trojans’ fourth point with a three-set victory at court three.
The final top-25 Pac-12 team, No. 21 Oregon, also swept two dual matches last weekend. The Ducks pulled off 7-0 wins over BYU and Drake, with sophomore Thomas Laurent tying a program record with his 15th consecutive singles victory in a row.
Women’s water polo
Michael Hull, assistant Sports editor
Down goes the Cardinal.
While No. 3 UCLA took down No. 4 California in the third-place game of the Barbara Kalbus Invitational, No. 1 Stanford (11-1) bowed to No. 2 USC (18-0) in the finals of collegiate women’s water polo’s most competitive tournament yet.
The Trojans won the midseason rematch of last year’s national championship game 10-9 in double overtime, in a game that featured seven ties.
Stanford’s Makenzie Fischer put the Cardinal on the board first, but USC answered with three straight goals and went into halftime with a 4-3 lead.
Brianna Daboub, sister of 2015 UCLA men’s water polo co-captain Anthony Daboub, scored the third of her eventual team-high four goals midway through the third quarter to give USC a two-goal lead. Two goals from Stanford’s Jordan Raney evened the game up, and sent it into the fourth quarter knotted at five.
The Trojans would go up by one twice in the fourth, each time Stanford tying it up, the final time courtesy of a penalty shot from women’s senior national team captain Maggie Steffens.
The Cardinal struck first in overtime, but like the opening to regulation, the Trojans scored successive goals to retake the lead, 9-8. Fischer scored her team-high fourth goal of the game to even things at nine with less than a minute remaining in the second period, but Ioanna Haralabidis scored a man-up goal with five seconds left for the final score of 10-9.
In last year’s national championship, her sister, Stephania Haralabidis, scored the game-winning goal on a half-court shot with six seconds left in the game. The two teams will see each other again April 8, when the Cardinal travels to Los Angeles.