Men's Water Polo

Big 7-1 Run Lift Tigers to Title Game

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Trailing 5-4 early in the second quarter, top-seed and seventh-ranked Pacific went on a 7-1 run to help them to a 13-10 win over No. 4 seed and 13th-ranked UC Irvine in the first semifinal for the 2022 Golden Coast Conference Men's Championships Saturday evening at Campus Pool in Santa Barbara, Calif.

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Reuel D'Souza led Pacific (20-6) with a six-point game, scoring five goals with an assist. Mihailo Vukazic had three goals and an assist and Bogdan Djerkovic had four goals. Jeremie Cote had three assists. The Tigers advance to their second straight GCC tournament title game. Game time for Sunday's championship game has been moved to 1 pm.

Dylan Patist added two more goals to his GCC tournament total (seven on Friday), giving him nine in the two games. Ethan Shipman, Zlatan Nikocevic and Jack Stevens also had two goals of UC Irvine (16-13).

The Anteaters held leads of 1-0, 2-1, and 5-4. Patist scored the first goal of the game and Jackson Matos made it 2-1. After D'Souza scored back-to-back goals to give Pacific a 3-2 lead, the teams traded goals for Pacific to lead 4-3. Shipman and Nikocevic scored back-to-back UCI goals for a 5-4 lead with 5:41 to play in the first half.

From there, Pacific made their move and went on the big run to lift them to the title game.

D'Souza tied the game with 4:42 to play and Vukazic gave Pacific the lead for good at 6-5 with 3:18 to play in the half. The score would stay that way until the opening possession of the second half when Djerkovic scored to make it 7-5. The Tigers would stretch the lead to 11-6 on a D'Souza goal with 1:47 to play in the third quarter to end the run.

UC Irvine outscored Pacific 4-2 in the fourth quarter by Pacific's Bae Fountain made some key saves to keep UCI at arms length. He finished with 12 saves.

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