Bush leads No. 14 Brown University to Northeast Water Polo Conference Championship Third Place Finish with 11-9 Victory Over No. 18 St. Francis College Brooklyn

by Daisy Costello Lake

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Senior Tommy Bush (Lafayette, Calif./Acalanes) led No. 14 Brown University with three goals and two assists to earn Player of the Game as the Bears bested No. 18 St. Francis College Brooklyn to win Third-Place at the Northeast Water Polo Conference Championship (NWPC) at Harvard University’s Blodgett Pool.

St. Francis Brooklyn got off to a fast start, with sophomore Boris Posavec (Zagreb, Croatia/Marina) striking first for the Terriers with a goal off of the opening sprint. Posavec continued to roll, netting his second goal of the game just 30 seconds later off a Will Lapkin (So. Newport Beach, Calif./Mater Dei) assist to put the Terriers ahead of the Bears 2-0 just one minute into the game.

Brown responded with an advantage goal in the fourth minute of play when senior Rico Burke (San Mateo, Calif./Bellarmine) found the back of the net following a St. Francis Brooklyn drawn exclusion. With the score sitting at 2-1 in favor of St. Francis, junior Jonas Veazey (Dallas, TX/Bryan Adams) scored his first goal of the tournament off of a Brown drawn exclusion to put the Terriers back ahead of the Bears by two goals.

The Bears responded just a few seconds later, with freshman Adam Fuller (Santa Barbara, Calif./San Marcos) putting one between the pipes to cut the Terriers lead back to one goal. Following this, St. Francis went on a three-score run, with two goals from Lapkin and one from junior Nikita Prokhin (Mississuaga, Ontario/Silverthorn) giving the Terriers their largest lead of the game, 6-2. Bush would cut into the Terriers’ lead to three goals with an advantage goal with just six seconds left on the clock in the first quarter.

St. Francis, who had found an offensive rhythm in the first quarter, stalled in the second quarter as Brown goalie Riad Hallal (Fr. Coronoado, Calif./Coronado) recorded three saves in the frame while allowing just one St. Francis goal, Lapkin’s third goal of the game with 4:47 remaining in the frame.

Meanwhile, Brown chipped away at St. Francis’ four-goal first quarter lead. Scores from Bush in the first minute and two from junior Travis Bouscaren (Cambridge, Mass./Phillips Academy Andover) at 4:47 and 1:16 brought the Bears back within two of the Terriers, 7-5, at halftime.

At halftime, something in Brown changed, and the Bears offense exploded in the second half, starting in the third quarter. The first of four third-quarter goals for the Bears came with 6:31 on the clock when Austin Hwang (Sr. Laguna Hills, Calif./Laguna Hills) answered a Terriers’ goal with one of his own, making the score 8-6 in favor of the Terriers. Then, the Bears found a groove and rattled off three-straight goals to gain their first lead of the game going into the fourth quarter, 9-8. Scoring for the Bears were sophomore Hudson Rawlings (So. Murrieta, Calfi./Murrieta Valley) and Bouscaren, who added two goals for the Bears complete his hat trick on the game.

In the fourth quarter, the Bears scored two goals courtesy of Bush to put the game away. His first was an advantage goal with 4:52 on the clock to give the Bears a two-score cushion, 10-8. Then, at the 3:06 mark, Bush put the game away with a cannon shot from the outside off an assist from Tyler Kirchberg (Sr. Orinda, Calif./Miramonte) to put the game out of reach, 11-9.

St. Francis, having scored six goals in the first quarter alone, could not find its rhythm offensively from then on, scoring just three goals for the rest of the game. Tadeu Rodrigues (So. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil/Colagio Pedro II) would get one past Hallal with 1:18 left in the fourth quarter, but it was not enough to spark the team.

Sophomore goalie Viktor Klauzer (Szzekesfehervar, Hungary/Albert Einstein) put up a solid performance for the Terriers in the cage, making 14 saves throughout the game. However, a lack of second half offense sunk the Terriers.