2024 NCAA Women's Tournament

College - Mens
1

The first NCAA women’s water polo tournament was held in 2001. UCLA won 7 of the first 9 tournaments. They haven’t won since 2009. Since 2010, Stanford has won 8 times (Stanford also won in 2002); USC has won 5 times since 2010 (USC also won in 2004). The 2020 tournament was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are my predictions for this year’s NCAA tournament:

1st. UCLA. UCLA has the most depth and an outstanding goalie, Lauren Steele. Steele graduated from Orange Lutheran High School a semester early to play for UCLA this season. She is the best freshman female goalie since Ashleigh Johnson and is a likely 2028 Olympian. I predict UCLA will easily beat the winner of the Wagner/Biola game in the first round of the tournament, USC by 2 or 3 in the semifinals, and Hawaii by 1 or 2 in the finals. UCLA is undefeated but they have played several very close games and it won’t surprise me if they don’t win the tournament.

2nd. Hawaii. Hawaii’s coach, Maureen Cole, will retire from coaching after the tournament. She’s underrated. This is Hawaii’s best team. Their starting field players may be better than UCLA’s starting field players. However, UCLA has a better goalie and more depth. If Hawaii plays its best game and UCLA doesn’t play well, Hawaii will win the tournament. I predict Hawaii will beat Princeton by 2 goals in the first round and Cal by 1 in the semifinals.

3rd. Cal. Cal has never won the NCAA women’s tournament. This is the best Cal team in many years. Senior goalie Isabel Williams is having a great year. Cal has a very good defensive team. However, I don’t think they have the depth or enough elite players to win the tournament. I predict Cal will beat Fresno State by 2 or 3 in the first round and will lose to Hawaii by 1 in the semifinals. If Cal plays well and Hawaii doesn’t, Cal will beat Hawaii in the semifinals.

3rd. USC. This is one of the weakest USC teams in recent memory. They have been inconsistent this season. I think their first-round game against Stanford could go either way but I predict USC will win by 1 goal. Stanford has the edge at goalie and on the pool deck; USC has better field players.

5th. Stanford. This is the worst Stanford team I can remember. Maya Avital is the third or fourth best goalie in the country and Sophie Wallace is one of the best center defenders. Otherwise, Stanford doesn’t come close to having its normal level of talent. That’s what happens when you lose 5 players to senior national teams training for the Olympics.

5th. Princeton. Princeton has one of the 3 or 4 best goalies in the country, Miramonte’s Lindsey Lucas. Freshman Charlotte Riches and junior Kayla Yelensky are good players. Princeton misses its best field player, center Jovana Sekulic, who is training with the senior national team. Without Sekulic, I don’t think Princeton can beat a loaded Hawaii team.

5th. Fresno State. This may be Fresno State’s best team. They started the season very well, slumped a bit in the middle of the season, and picked it up down the stretch. Natalie Benson is an underrated coach. I think Fresno State will give Cal a good game through three quarters and won’t be shocked if they pull off the upset.

5th. Biola or Wagner. The winner of the Biola/Wagner play-in game is the only school that doesn’t have a chance to win its first-round game.

Tournament MVP - Lauren Steele.

2

Great synopsis Jeff. I think the only 2 games that could go either way are Stanford-USC and Cal-Hawaii.

If Stanford goalie Maya Avital is playing well, she could stop USC’s talent score many goals, but I agree USC has the depth.

Cal has the home field advantage, but Hawaii has better coaching. I do agree Hawaii doesn’t have the depth, but they have some very strong players with Bia Mantellaro Dias, Alba Bonamusa and Lucia Gomez among others.

3

Appreciate the breakdown Jeff. I am aligned with UCLA winning it all and finishing undefeated on the year. I also agree with Limey that Maya Avital can be a difference maker.

I have seen all three of the USC v Stanford games and she has been a big difference in those matches and a primary reason Stanford is 3-0 against the Trojans. Another is Hicks at 2meters who gives USC trouble. Each game has gotten closer and closer but I think Stanford wins again before losing in lopsided game with UCLA.

On the other side of the bracket, I am going with Cal over Hawaii. I do think recent form / competition matters. Cal has been slugging it out with MPSF competition over last two months while Hawaii last played MPSF teams in mid March. The adjustment to the size and speed of competition can be a factor. More significantly, Williams in goal is a big advantage and the Cal home pool environment with fans that close is a real thing.

Will be a great weekend of water polo to cap off a very entertaining season!

4

Not too much to add really…Lauren Steele has Olympic potential based on what I have seen. Pretty cool to see more out of state kids figuring out how to be elite. UCLA beats Cal in the final but I do think Cal could get it done if Isabel Williams plays lights out.

I’m in agreement that Hawaii is going to be hurt by the lack of strength at the end of their schedule. The BW conference was a little down this year.

Lastly, congrats to the Pomona-Pitzer Colleges Sagehens for their third consecutive D3 title this weekend!

5

Curious to hear everyone’s predictions for today’s
UCLA-Cal game?

Both teams have great goalies, but the Bruins have a deeper roster, while the bears have the home pool advantage.

Should be an exiting game!

6

I have already missed on two of my predictions but I’m sticking with UCLA to win the championship game. Cal has a chance if Williams outplays Steele. However, I give the edge to UCLA because UCLA has a better center, better coaching, and more depth.

Hats off to Simmons for being the first female coach to take her team to the NCAA championship game. Three of the four coaches in the semifinals were great players at UCLA.

7

Congrats to UCLA on an undefeated season and Adam Wright grabbing a women’s championship.

The Bruins stuck with a hard 4:5 zone and let the Bears shoot from the 4 spot all game long and just let Lauren Steele get things done.

On the other side the Bears were running a gap between 2-3 that allowed the 2 spot to shoot several times and score more often. Williams played well enough to win against most teams but not this particular Bruin team. Fun game of chess to watch unfold.

8

I am a little late to the party, but here are my thoughts on the 2024 season. Please take it all with a grain of sale. If I was a betting man, I think that I would have gone 0-20 with my picks this year!

First of all, congratulations to UCLA. 26-0 is impressive any year and they were 10-0 vs Cal, USC, Stanford and Hawaii. I had them slated for 3rd going into the season. They definitely proved to be the deepest team in the NCAAs and Coach Wright did not hesitate to use his entire bench this season. UCLA teams sometimes peak at the beginning of the season, but this year it was the opposite in the games that I saw. They just got stronger as the season went on. Also, and not surprising given their depth and Wright’s conditioning, they were very strong in the second halves of their games. They did not seem to have any absolute superstars in the field, but their team defense was impressive and it seemed like they had a different player step up every game to score 3+ goals. Freshman Steele was awesome all year. She may have caught some by surprise, but whoever had seen her play in the past knew of her potential. IMHO, Steele deserved to win the Cutino Award.

Towards the middle of the season, Cal was my pick to win it all. They had just lost a winnable game 7-6 to UCLA and blew out Stanford 11-6 in their own poo and I thought that they had all of the pieces to bring Cal their first National Championship. Unlike some of the other teams, I do not believe that they were missing any players to the Olympic cycle. They also picked up Flynn in the portal, were a relatively older team, have a very solid coach in Simmons and Williams was outstanding as usual. With Flynn, Dempsey and Voorvelt, Cal had three of the better shooters in the country. Reynoso is a very good player and anchored their solid defense. On offense, they were not very strong at center and this allowed many teams to concentrate on their perimeter and force them into tough outside shots. Otherwise, I think that their starting team was as good as any in the country, but they could just not solve UCLA this year. Congratulations to Coach Simmons for becoming the first female to coach in an NCAA Water Polo Championship game and to Williams for winning Cal’s first Cutino award on the women’s side.

At the beginning of the year, I had USC winning it all. To me, it did not seem like they really had a weakness in the pool and had a good mix of younger and older players. Stern is a very experienced goalie, they had very good outside shooters in Aznar, Janov and Stryker, a solid center in freshman Gazzaniga and were fairly deep on the bench. While they played very good water polo in spurts, they just could not seem to ever really get it going. I was very surprised that they went 0-4 against Stanford including giving up a 9-4 3rd quarter lead in their MPSF Tournament game and getting blown out 8-3 in the NCAAs. IMHO, Moon is a very good coach, but they were the most disappointing team for me this year.

Hawaii’s Coach Cole had a tremendous run in he last year at the helm, but just was not able to solve UCLA and Cal who accounted for their 4 losses. They twice gave up big leads to UCLA and just could not get their offense going in their NCAA semi-final game against Cal. Logtens is a good goalie and their top 4 or 5 players could match up against anyone’s, but they did not have the depth of the other top teams. Dias was as dynamic as any player in the NCAA’s and was always fun to watch.

I was not sure what to expect from Stanford this year due to their missing players, but I certainly did not count them out. Tanner is a great coach, Avital is an exceptional goalie, Hicks is a very good center, Wallace is a tremendous all-around player and they are a strong and fast team, so the potential was there. Overall, they had a very up and down season. They had two great early wins against Cal only to get blown out by them twice at the end of the year. They went 4-0 against a more talented (IMHO) USC team, but lost to Fresno St, struggled against Arizona St and Indiana and “mysteriously” avoided their game against Princeton at the beginning of the year. They finished the year fairly strong by blowing out USC in the NCAAs and played UCLA tough for first half in the semis.

I had Princeton as my dark horse this year and I was honestly expecting more from them this season. They had a few high points along the way including winning another CWPA Championship and going 5-0 against rivals Michigan and Harvard. At the same time, I do not think that they had any big upsets along the way and dropped games to Fresno St, Indiana, UCSD and LMU, all games that I was expecting them to win at the beginning of the year. Missing Sekulic really hurt them as they were never really able to get much going out of center. Lucas is another top notch goalie and they are a very scrappy team with some good outside shooters including Yelensky, but just did not have the depth and talent to make a run like they did last year in the NCAAs.

Looking forward to the Olympics this summer and the 2025 NCAA season will be here before we know it!