INDIANAPOLIS, IN., December 2. CAL water polo coach Kirk Everist won't be the only rookie headman seeking the men's NCAA water polo championship next weekend.<\/p>\n
The NCAA Men's Water Polo Committee announced today the four teams participating in the 2002 National Collegiate championships this weekend at Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles. Defending champ Stanford — coached by first-year man John Vargas — has made the Final Four.<\/p>\n
Pepperdine, winner of the regular season MPSF competition and second to Cal in the tournament, was not chosen.<\/p>\n
Stanford finished fourth at yesterday's Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament, won by Cal. But the committee apparently felt the Cardinal's 22 wins this season were sufficient justification to give them a spot in the tourney. <\/p>\n
In the first game Saturday, Stanford (22-5) will play the University of California, San Diego (19-11) followed by California (19-6) versus Queens College (24-3). <\/p>\n
Conferences receiving automatic qualification were: Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, the Collegiate Water Polo Association and the Western Water Polo Association. The remaining team was selected at large without geographical restrictions. <\/p>\n
A four-team, single-elimination tournament will be played, with a losers' bracket to determine third place. <\/p>\n
Last year, host Stanford University defeated the University of California, Los Angeles, 8-5, to capture its ninth championship. <\/p>\n
Since the beginning of the championship in 1969, no team from outside the state of California has ever reached the championship final. <\/p>\n
Cal has won a record 11 NCAA Championships and will be seeking its 12th. Neither UCSD nor Queens has ever won before, although the UCSD Tritons lost the finals to UCLA several years ago.<\/p>\n
Cal and Stanford have played four times this season, splitting their series. Most recently, Cal defeated Stanford on Saturday in the semis of the MPSF Tournament.<\/p>\n
— Bill Bell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INDIANAPOLIS, IN., December 2. CAL water polo coach Kirk Everist won't be the only rookie headman seeking the men's NCAA water polo championship next weekend. The NCAA Men's Water Polo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n