Water polo fans—that’s right, all two of you—the Big Splash has finally arrived. The showdown between the No. 2 Cal men’s water polo team and third-ranked Stanford starts Saturday at 2 p.m., at Stanford’s Avery Aquatic Center.

To say that there’s some history here is a bit of a understatement: the two programs have combined for 23 of the 40 NCAA national championships, with Cal winning its 13th two years ago. Stanford finished as runner-up last season, but hasn’t earned a ring since current national team captain Tony Azevedo led it to back-to-back titles in 2001 and 2002.

The winner of this match—the regular season closer for both teams—will clinch the No. 2 seed for the upcoming MPSF Championships, as well as strengthening an at large bid for the NCAAs. Both are tied for second in the MPSF with identical 6-1 conference records (both fell to top-ranked USC). Both have also defeated the other in non-conference games this season: the Card edged the Bears, 8-7, at home in September’s NorCal Invite; Cal returned the favor by claiming a 10-8 victory in last month’s SoCal Invite.

But Stanford still has something that Cal doesn’t: All-American goalkeeper Jimmie Sandman, likely the best in the nation (at keeping the goal, not just having an awesome name).

To celebrate the occasion, I’ve taken the liberty of altering the words to the Metallica classic:

In the pool, full of glee
Don’t forget, my team
To make your fans beam

You’ll score some goals, easily
Thinking you’re home free
‘Til the Sandman, you see

(Click here to read more…)

Unfortunately, not everything from the 70-minute interview could be stuffed into Tuesday’s feature on Cal water polo player Brian Dudley. (Nice guy. He still showed up early after I changed the location about a half-hour or so beforehand; I walked into Caffe Med to find him already sitting at a table.) Fortunately, I have all the space I want here to stick some extra tidbits.

The Haas student hits everything from punctured eardrums to South African food to his fear of sharks:

You missed the first five games this season with a broken hand. What’s the worst injury you’ve suffered in water polo?

I guess, bursting my eardrum. Back home, I got in a little bit of confrontation with this one guy. I got hit and it burst my eardrum, it concussed me. I don’t remember much of what happened. I was completely dazed. I got kicked out and I just picked up the ball and threw it into the crowd. I had no idea what was going on. And obviously, I had a five-meter called on me because I was interfering with play. That was pretty painful.

How did that happen?

We were playing and the ball came in set. His object was never to go for the ball. My whole team was ganging up on this one kid. I was behind him, and he came around and just headbutted me. It cracked my headgear and burst my eardrum, and yeah, I got a bit dazed after that … Bleeding out your ear, you’re always like “Oh my God, what the hell is going on.” (Click here to read more…)

When UC Irvine flew up to Berkeley last Saturday, the Cal men’s water polo team decided to play the role of gracious host.

Not content with just inviting the seventh-ranked Anteaters into Spieker Aquatics Complex, the No. 2 Bears were kind enough to put the game on hold in the second quarter of a 13-10 win to run a defensive clinic.

With the score tied at 2-2 after the opening period, Cal blew the game open with a six-goal run that was punctuated only when UC Irvine drew two ejections and scored on a 6-on-4 man advantage.

At full numbers, however, Cal looked unstoppable. Sophomore Ivan Rackov started the show early with a beautiful move, picking the ball up over the head of a driving attacker and converting it into a quick counterattack goal.

But while Rackov has taken over this season as the Cal’s leading scorer with 39 goals, senior co-captain Spencer Warden is still unquestionably the team’s best player.

As coach Kirk Everist is fond of saying, Warden often looked as if he were in two places at once as he disrupted the Anteater offense. At just under three minutes left in the quarter, he jumped seemingly out of nowhere to pick the ball off near the top line for the first of his two steals.

Less than a minute later, he made a full-length leap out of the pool to rob a high-arcing, cross-cage pass.

Despite his acrobatics, the three-time All-American brushes off his exploits as simply routine.

“I just anticipated the pass,” said Warden, who has a team-high 45 steals. “Just playing the game, man. Trying to make a play here and there, and sometimes it works out for me.”

His teammates, though, aren’t quite as dismissive.

“I know there’s no stats for how many times he denies their best offensive player the ball, but I’m just happy he’s on our team,” two-meter defender Brian Dudley said. “It’s incredible.”

If you think water polo isn’t a contact sport, think again.

During the Cal men’s water polo team’s game against Santa Clara on Sunday at Spieker Aquatics Complex, sophomore Travis Bickham (with ball) got tangled up with Broncos utility Brett Zylstra.

Bickham seems to have water in his eyes, but he probably didn’t have a bad taste in his mouth after Sunday’s 13-9 victory for the Bears.

This week’s “Points and Shoot” image is brought to you by Daily Cal photographer Victoria Chow.

For more coverage of the Cal men’s water polo team, click here. Also, check out “This Week in Cal Sports” for a slideshow of Bears athletics.

Hopefully, that’ll hold you over until next week!

The annual Big Splash against currently undefeated Stanford won’t be played until Nov. 21, when the Cal men’s water polo team makes the trip across the Bay.

But even though the conference match is still over a month away, the No. 4 Bears will soon likely face the top-ranked Cardinal for the second time this fall.

The two teams are expected to meet in the semifinals of the SoCal Invitational at UC Irvine this Sunday, with Cal eager for revenge after being edged 8-6 in the NorCal Invitational semis three weeks ago.

Just ask junior Zach White, who was knocked out with a concussion in that game and sat out Cal’s next two matches.

“I really want to win this game and shove it down their throats,” the starting center said. “If we blow them out and just keep running up the score, I would gladly beat them 100-0 to make them look really bad, even if it makes us look like assholes.”

Unfortunately for the Bears, blowing out Stanford will be a next to impossible task. Cal is currently riding a three-game losing streak to Stanford heading into the weekend, but the losses have come by a total of four points.

The Bears’ last win against the Cardinal? The third-place match of the MPSF Championship in 2007, a victory that gave Cal the at-large bid to the NCAA tournament and an eventual national title.

This year, Stanford is again anchored in the cage by goalkeeper Jimmie Sandman. The All-American was named Co-MPSF Player of the Year and was a finalist for the Peter J. Cutino Award, given to the top player in the nation.

And if his accolades and 6-foot-5 frame weren’t intimidating enough, just take a look at the man’s beard.

On the offensive end, the Cardinal is powered by the Wigo brothers, Drac and Janson, who won the last two MPSF Player of the Week awards. Both scored 55 goals last season to lead the team.

Stanford’s lineup would be truly frightening if it hadn’t lost senior attacker Sage Wright, the team’s third-leading scorer last season. Wright tore his ACL this past summer and is redshirting this fall to retain eligibility for next year.

But even if the Cardinal roster looks stacked on paper, games between top teams are always close enough for wins to go either way.

And a bit of good, ol’-fashioned loathing might be enough fuel to tip it in favor of White and the rest of the Bears.

Said White: “I just really, really don’t like them right now.”

Goalkeepers don’t contribute on offense all that often. Sure, well-placed outlet passes are crucial to feeding counterattacks, but those aren’t the sort of things that show up on a stat sheet. In the cage, you’ll likely spend more time barking out orders to your defense or watching the shot clock than doing anything flashy like score a goal.

That is, unless your name is Joel Dennerley and you play for top-ranked USC.

With 3:40 left in the first quarter against No. 3 Cal in the NorCal Invite on Sunday, the sophomore managed to slip a slow, rolling ball into the cage—his own cage, which he was, ya know, supposed to be defending.

Dennerley had tried to fling the ball away from the goal, only to hit one of his own teammates on the head. The ball then ricocheted behind him, dribbling in painfully to put the Bears up, 3-2, as he desperately lunged back.

The goal was credited to sophomore Ivan Rackov for being the last Bears player to touch the ball, making it his second of the game and ninth of the weekend.

“Never,” Rackov said when asked if he’d ever scored quite like that. “I didn’t even know it was my goal until they called it. It was a little bit funny, but a goal’s a goal.”

Of course, the Trojans still won, 8-6, to finish third in the tournament, which made the whole mishap significantly less embarrassing.

Honorable Mentions

A pair of field blocks also deserves mention.

Let’s start with Spencer Warden’s leaping block to stop a point-blank shot in the third quarter. Warden had been yelling for someone to cover the open man on the left post, but when no one was able to shift quickly enough, he dove away from defending the set to swat down the shooter’s arm.

Brian Dudley freelanced even more in the last two minutes of the game. The junior two-meter defender got creative defending the perimeter, sticking his foot up out of the water to block the shot.

Slated this Saturday for the Cal men’s water polo team is the annual alumni match, which follows a more serious game against the Pacific Tigers. For anyone hoping to see a fun ol’ water polo match with absolutely nothing but bragging rights riding on the line, it will be an event worth watching.

The game is always a highly-anticipated affair for both sides: the young’uns have a chance to push around some out-of-shape alums while the older fellas get to relive their glory days.

As has been tradition, coach Kirk Everist will don a Speedo and head back into the pool, but don’t expect the two-time Olympian to be treated with any respect from his players. In a quick sit-down, senior co-captains Trent Calder and Frank Reynolds unveiled their game plan for keeping Everist in check; expect a few cheap shots from the pair as well as some entertaining trash-talk (fyi in the video Calder’s description of Everist is PG-13).

Only a week after he landed in California, I managed to get freshman Ivan Rackov in front of a camera. Rackov, along with Luka Saponjic, is fresh off of playing for Serbia at the 2008 European Junior Water Polo Championships. The pair helped Serbia to a bronze medal finish, which comes as a slight disappointment considering that they took home the under-18 championship title in 2007.

At the NorCal Tournament Rackov turned some heads with his eight goal outburst. The fact that he even played was startling as a long drawn-out process with the NCAA Clearinghouse only came to a resolution the afternoon before the opening match.

During our conversation, Rackov discussed some of the differences between the European and collegiate games. The distinctions have caused him to change his offensive repertoire, which was on full display at practice.

What he now considers his favorite shot—a dangerously accurate near-post shot from the left side of the goal—seems to be quite effective; during one drill at Tuesday’s practice it caught Zachary White by surprise several times.

The language difference is also another barrier that Rackov will have to work with; last weekend it was one of the contributing factors to the Bears losing two consecutive games. Coach Kirk Everist isn’t too worried about this being a problem and expects everything to be worked out over the next month.

I, for one, would like to see the entire team pick up some basic Serbian to throw off USC, Stanford and UCLA. And by basic Serbian I mean more than just your ole’ doodly ga.

On Monday, I caught up with sophomore Zachary White after the men’s water polo team finished their intra-squad scrimmage. White filled me in on Cal’s strong start to the season and how he is adjusting to his increased role on the team.

During last weekend’s Navy Open, he scored four goals, earned three ejections and had two steals for the Bears. As he did last year, White returns to his position as a center for the Bears, where he will be splitting time with junior Thomas Pearson.

White was the only true freshman during the 2007 campaign who did not redshirt.