STANFORD, Calif. — The No. 5-ranked/No. 4 seed/Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference (MAWPC) Champion Fordham University water polo team’s push for its first National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men’s Water Polo Championship ended as the Rams fell to No. 1/No. 1 seed/Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) Champion the University of Southern California, 16-7, at Stanford University’s Avery Aquatic Center.
After USC opened the scoring, Fordham (26-4) tied the game at one at the 4:14 mark with a goal by Diego Tresa (Fr., Rome, Italy/Istituo Santa Maria). However, the Trojans scored three times to finish out the quarter with a 4-1 lead.
USC extended the margin to 8-3 by halftime with Alessandro Salipante (Fr., Brindisi, Italy/Lico Scientifico Fermi Monticelli) and Andras Toth (So. Pecs, Hungary/PTE Babits Gyakorlo Gimnazium) getting on the board for the Rams.
Southern California put the game out of reach in the third quarter, outscoring the Rams, 5-1, to expand its lead to 13-4. Fordham’s lone goal came from Mark Dyck (Fr., Berlin, Germany/Sportschule im Olympiapark) on a cross cage shot.
Fordham scored the first two goals of the fourth quarter to pull within seven at 13-6, but could not get any closer.
Toth and Marco Napolitano (Gr., Naples, Italy/Istituo Sacro Cuore) each had two goals for Fordham, while Salipante had a goal and two assists.
Luca Provenziani (So., Rome, Italy/Liceo Scientifico Statale Isaaco Newton) notched two assists in the game to give him a Fordham single season record of 103 for the season.
Toth ended the season with a single season school record of 134 goals.
In net, Matthew Bonello DuPuis (Gr., Silema, Malta/St. Martin’s (University of Malta)) made six saves to go with a steal.
Fordham finishes in a tie with No. 3/No. 3 seed Stanford University – which fell to No. 2/No. 2 seed the University of California-Los Angeles by a 9-7 score in the other semifinal – for Third Place at the NCAA Championship.
It marks the second time in as many years the Rams claim a Third Place finish as the squad fell to USC by an 18-16 score in overtime in the semifinals of the 2024 NCAA Championship at Stanford to conclude a 32-1 season.
Fordham’s back-to-back Third Place finishes mark the first time a team from outside California finishes Third or higher at the NCAA Championship in consecutive seasons. The Rams join Queens College (1997, 2002) and Princeton (2009, 2011) in claiming pairs of Third Place finishes. The University of Massachusetts (1999), the United States Naval Academy (2007), St. Francis College Brooklyn (2012) and Harvard University (2016) hold solo Third Place finishes at the event as a team from outside California has never appeared in the National Championship game.
Information courtesy Fordham University Athletics Communications
