Redshirt freshman goalie E.B. Keeve (left) extends to block a shot during the Sun Devils' 12-3 win over Hartwick on March 25. The Sun Devils host conference foe San Jose State in the last regular season game of the year before heading to the MPSF tournament. (Photo by Dominic Valente)With the water polo season is winding down, ASU is holding strong onto the No. 3 national ranking.
The significance of the No. 3 spot is huge — it guarantees the Sun Devils (24-5, 3-2 MPSF) a berth in the NCAA tournament.
The winners of the six conferences get an auto-bid to the NCAA eight-team tournament. Two at-large spots are given to the two highest-ranked teams that did not win their conference.
The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation is stacked. The top-five teams in the nation all play there, which means the No. 2 and No. 3 teams will gain that large spots.
That brings up ASU’s matchup against MPSF rival No. 10 San Jose State this weekend.
“It’s definitely a must-win game,” said senior attacker Alicia Brightwell. “If we win that game well, then we’ll be confident going into MPSF.”
The Spartans (10-9, 0-4 MPSF) come to Tempe having dropped two in a row, but those losses were to No. 4 UCLA and No. 5 Cal.
SJSU is led offensively by two 2-meter defenders: freshman Rae Leckness, who paces the team with 2.26 goals per game and sophomore Timi Molnar, who is eighth in the conference with 2.16 goals per game. Only ASU has another pair of teammates in the top eight in scoring.
They key to beating the Spartans is exploiting their defense. San Jose State ranks sixth out the seven MPSF teams with 9.74 goals per game. ASU scores 10.90 goals per game.
Interestingly, the Spartans have scored the same amount of goals that they have allowed: 185 goals at an average of 9.74 per game. ASU’s defense allows 7.03 goals per game.
ASU has not failed to score at least 10 goals in a game since March 9 against USC, a span stretching 13 games. In that same time, the Sun Devils have only given up 10 goals or more only once. Both of those cases were in the same game, March 24 against Stanford.
“They’re a very physical team, and their tactics are sometimes a little different offensively,” ASU coach Todd Clapper said. “We have to be ready for that and scout them and prepare for them.”
Redshirt freshman E.B. Keeve also spoke about this weekend’s upcoming game.
“I definitely consider it a very important game,” Keeve said. “We want to have a good ranking going into MPSF. Worst case, if anything were to happen, we would come out ... prepared to play whoever. We’re going to play to win.
“That doesn’t mean ... we’re not going to destroy and try to beat San Jose of course, because that’s the plan.”
Saturday is ASU’s final game before the MPSF tournament at the end of April.
Reach the reporter at justin.emerson@asu.edu
