No. 12 Long Beach State Wraps Regular Season With Two Road Games

LONG BEACH, Calif. – Long Beach State Men's Water Polo concludes their regular season on the road with two non-conference matches as they face No. 19 Loyola Marymount on Thursday at 6 p.m. and No. 8 UC Irvine on Friday at 7 p.m. 

 

The Beach (15-10, 2-3 Big West) dropped their last conference match up on the road against No. 14 UC Santa Barbara on overtime. After trailing for most of the game, the Gauchos came back in the second half and took the game to overtime, winning 15-13. Both teams will now face each other once again on the first round of the Big West Championships hosted by UC Davis next week. 

 

Freshman Gabi Acosta had another great game for the Beach scoring a career-high of five goals in six opportunities. Senior Evan Cain netted four goals and Liam Ward collected 12 saves on the loss. Acosta continues to lead the team 52 goals and leads the Big West rankings with 15 goals scored on conference play, averaging three goals per game. Cain follows Acosta with 45 goals in the year and ranks third on the league rankings with 13 goals. Sophomore Caleb Francisco has been a key player scoring 10 goals on the last four Big West matches and ranks 5th for the team with 33 goals so far in the season. 

 

The first match up of the week for the Beach will be at Loyola Marymount (9-14, 0-6 WCC) on Thursday night. The Lions comes from two tough conference losses to Air Force on the road, 19-18 and to No. 13 San Jose State at home, 14-10. Leading the Lions offense is sophomore Abel Romero Corbalan with 63 goals so far in the season with eight of them coming on the match up against Air Force. On defense, senior Stelios Dalmaras contributed with 146 saves, 24 steals, eight assists and two goals so far. The last time both teams face each other was in the 2023 season when the Beach defeated the Lions on overtime 16-14 led by Bruno Chiappini with six goals. 

 

On Friday night, the Beach will face UC Irvine for a special non-conference match-up of the Black and Blue Rivalry. The Anteaters (18-7, 5-0 Big West) secured the first seed for Big West Championships going undefeated in conference. Junior Luka Krstic and sophomore Johann Thrall lead the team on offense with 51 and 50 goals, respectively. On defense, graduate student Jacob Pyle and junior Zayd Mahmoud split time on the cage to combine over 220 saves. This will be the second match-up between both teams as UCI edged the Beach 13-12 for conference play on October 18th at the Ken Lindgren Aquatics Center. 

Thursday's contest against LMU will be livestreamed on ESPN+. Live stats for both matches can be followed on thefosh.net.