SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — In a fixture dedicated as the Nick Johnson Memorial Match, the No. 12 UC Santa Barbara Men’s Water Polo team did the late Johnson proud, delivering his signature 110 percent effort on defense to shut down a very talented Long Beach State team and upset the No. 9 Beach, 13-8.

Wyatt Pieretti made nine saves in the Santa Barbara goal and scored a goal himself as part of a cathartic fourth quarter for the Blue and Gold. Stellar Serbian Luigi Canepa continued his dominant debut season with four goals and an assist, while fellow freshman phenom Dash D’Ambrosia delivered his own hat trick.

“Long Beach is a very good team. I told a lot of people I thought they should have been ranked 6th in the final last poll, or 7th at worst, and we just came out and played amazing defense,” UCSB head coach Wolf Wigo said. “We stuck to the plan. We didn’t want Gulisano and the centers to have a bunch of goals, and they didn’t, and they got frustrated. They took some bad shots. They were tired.

“We were trying to wear them down, counter them and everything worked. Some days things don’t work and some days things work, so it’s nice to have a day where it’s clicking, everyone’s playing great defense. We had some good shots too, so fun day, fun day, alumni weekend, always good to win with the alumni here.”

The visiting Beach was able to keep with the Gauchos through the first quarter, though they only scored twice in the frame. For Santa Barbara, Canepa scored the game’s first goal, and after the Beach answered it was D’Ambrosia denting the twine as the Gauchos never trailed in the game.
 
Santa Barbara earned its separation with a massive second-quarter effort on both ends, out-scoring Long Beach, 4-1. Not only did the Gauchos’ defensive work keep the Beach from putting the ball in the net, it also allowed Santa Barbara to counterattack and make the Beach swimmers chase them.

That desperate chasing led to a pair of five-meter penalty shots for the Gauchos, both of which Canepa converted. Charlie Johnson also had a natural goal in the quarter, but Finn Genc’s tally with just 11 seconds left before halftime was arguably the most important, ending a near-five-minute goal drought for Santa Barbara and giving his team a 6-3 edge at the break.
 
Coming out of the interval, the pressure mounted with a low-scoring and closely fought third quarter in which the visitors took one goal out of their deficit.

Noah Loo was the lone scorer in the third for Santa Barbara, but again the ferocious Gaucho defense averted disaster, holding the Beach to just two goals and thereby keeping the home side ahead by two entering the fourth quarter.
 
And in that fourth quarter, the pressure burst, in the way a champagne cork pops. D’Ambrosia fired home the first two goals on the period and the Santa Barbara defense kept Long Beach off the board for nearly five minutes.

When the Beach finally did score to make it 9-6 Gauchos, Hayden Tully responded in just 13 seconds to put Santa Barbara back up by four. If Canepa’s fourth goal of the game was not the dagger, then surely Pieretti’s first career goal was.

The Beach had pulled their goalkeeper after Canepa’s score, leaving the cage wide open after Pieretti made one of his nine saves. The fifth-year netminder just had to launch the ball the length of the pool.

The Beach scored twice in the final two minutes, but those goals ended up as no more than consolation as Landon Lassahn tallied the 13th for the Gauchos to keep the game well out of reach.

Santa Barbara hits the road for more Big West action next weekend, traveling to face UC Irvine in Irvine on Friday, Oct. 30 for a 6 p.m. match. The Anteaters and Gauchos are two of four teams all holding a 2-1 record after three weeks of conference matches.