Oct. 31, 2014

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LOS ANGELES -- As the calendar turns from Halloween to November, the LMU men's water polo program hits the stretch run of its season, culminating with the 2014 Western Water Polo Championships at the Burns Aquatics Center Nov. 21-23.

This weekend will go a long way to determining the Lions' seed in the WWPA Championships as they travel to Northern California to take on No. 16 Santa Clara today, Halloween, at 4 pm and then No. 14 UC Davis on Sunday, Nov. 2 at 11 am.

All five games for the WWPA this week are conference games, setting key showdowns to determine the seedings for the upcoming 2014 WWPA Championships, which loom just three weeks away.

Four of the games on the week is North meets South. UC San Diego also travels north to take on Santa Clara and UC Davis. UC Davis hosts UC San Diego at 6 pm. Then on Nov. 1 Fresno Pacific travels to the Rockies to face Air Force in Colorado Springs at 12 noon (PT)/1 pm (MT). At 1 pm (PT), UC San Diego completes its trip at Santa Clara.

The Tritons will wrap-up conference play with the trip while everyone else will still have games into later November. UCSD leads the league at 4-0 while Santa Clara, UC Davis and LMU all sit at 1-1.

"This is a big weekend for us," said Head Coach John Loughran. "The conference has had a lot of parity where everyone can beat anyone on a given day. This is a great challenge."

Juniors Emanuel Di Stasio and Milutin Mitrovic lead the Lions in goals with 27 and 24, respectively. They rank 16th and 19th in the WWPA. Playing in just 11 games, Mitrovic is fourth in the league at 2.18 goals per game.

Sophomore Matt Cuozzo is ninth in the WWPA and the team leader with 23 assists this season. Mitrovic is fourth with 1.64 assists per contest.

Defensively, the Lions have rotated goalies as sophomore Kirk Wilenius went the distance in the win over Redlands while freshman Dominick Beaudine played all four quarters against UC San Diego last week. The pair split time against No. 2 USC. Beaudine is sixth in the league in steals with 33 but tops in the league with 2.2 steals per game.