The No. 13 UC Santa Barbara Men’s Water Polo team has been one of the busiest in the country to start its season, playing 14 games over 10 days, and on Sunday the Gauchos finally came home.

But before they could rest, they played the final two games of their season-opening gauntlet, hosting No. 3 Stanford and Cal Lutheran. 

Luigi Canepa continued his early season tour de force to help the Gauchos start well against the Cardinal, but two costly stretches saw the result go the way of the visitors, 24-13.

In the afternoon, Dylan Morris led a team-wide bounce-back, scoring a game-high four goals in Santa Barbara’s 25-5 win over the Kingsmen.

Stanford 24, UCSB 13

The Gauchos got a fast start in the morning game, but two long Cardinal scoring runs changed the tune of the match. Canepa put Santa Barbara on top early with two goals in the first two minutes, with Dash D’Ambrosia adding one to make it a 3-1 lead.

However, a 7-0 Stanford run turned the game on its head as the first quarter turned to the second.
 
The Gauchos fought back well in the second quarter, with two power-play goals from Canepa ending the Cardinal’s streak; Canepa would add a third goal in the quarter from a five-meter penalty shot. 

Charlie Johnson scored an impressive goal with his head still half underwater, and Camren Simoncelli added another. Finally, Finn Genc beat the halftime buzzer to bring Santa Barbara back within just two at the break, trailing 11-9.
 
The Cardinal made another run to start the second half, scoring three unanswered goals out of halftime, and while Simoncelli, Oliver Sherwood and Genc each found the scoresheet for Santa Barbara, Stanford still out-scored the Gauchos, 6-3, in the third quarter.

Things got fully out of hand in the fourth, when Stanford out-scored Santa Barbara, 7-1, with Simoncelli the lone Gaucho scorer.

“I was happy with how the team played today, we really came out strong in the first half against Stanford,” UCSB head coach Wolf Wigo said. “(Down) two goals in the third quarter, we put ourselves in a position to win and we kind of ran out of steam, unfortunately.

“We need a little more conditioning and we need a couple more players to develop into where they can come into those big games and give us real minutes and keep us in the game. We’re looking forward to that for the rest of the season.”

UCSB 25, Cal Lutheran 5

The Gauchos got another hot start in their second game of the day, and this time they made it stick. Landon Lassahn, Noah Loo, Sherwood, Tyler Roller, Sloan Brown, Morris and Keane each scored within the first seven minutes to give Santa Barbara an 8-0 lead after the first quarter.

The Gauchos did get something of a reminder that Cal Lutheran has played them well before in the second quarter, with each team scoring twice in the frame.
 
But after halftime, the Gauchos turned on the style again, out-scoring the Kingsmen 8-2 in the third and 7-1 in the fourth. Roller, Simoncelli, Johnson and Sherwood scored four unanswered to start the third quarter, then Thomas Colpo, Jake Reinke and Sean Keane added on before Hayden Tully beat the buzzer for his second goal of the game.

Morris completed his hat-trick to start the fourth, then Preston Bouch added his name to the long list of Gaucho scorers. Morris collected goal number four with a spinning, backhanded penalty shot, then Roller, Sean O’Brien and Reinke all tallied before Keane finished his first career hat-trick.

“The guys bounced back and had a really strong game, the first quarter was amazing,” Wigo said. “We’ve had some tight games with this team before, so the score is a little deceptive, but we really took it to them and we earned that lead in the first quarter, it wasn’t like it was handed to us.

“Really proud of the guys on this stretch of game that we’ve had, and now we’re really preparing for a lot of games coming up where we’re going to be playing teams very similarly ranked to us and see how we perform.”

Santa Barbara heads to Los Angeles next Saturday for big games against No. 1 UCLA and No. 15 LMU. Those two matches will help determine the Gauchos’ seeding for their next set of big games: the MPSF Invitational at Stanford Sept. 18-20.