LONG BEACH, Calif. — The UC Santa Barbara Men's Water Polo team has reached the final weekend of its regular season, as the Gauchos will pay a visit to Long Beach State Saturday night, with the No. 3 seed in The Big West Championship on the line.
 
UC Santa Barbara and Long Beach State are currently tied for third in The Big West standings, with identical 2-2 conference records. With a win on Saturday, the Gauchos would secure the No. 3 seed for The Big West Championship, regardless of what happens elsewhere in the conference, as the two 3-1 teams, UC Irvine and UC Davis, hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over UC Santa Barbara, while UC Santa Barbara holds it over the other 2-2 team, UC San Diego.
 
WHEN AND WHERE TO WATCH
The Gauchos and the Beach will hit the water at 7 p.m. Saturday night from the Ken Lindgren Aquatics Center in Long Beach. The game will be live on ESPN+ with live stats available through ucsbgauchos.com.
 
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE GAUCHOS (15-12, 2-2 Big West)
UC Santa Barbara got back in the win column last time out, putting together a dominant, 12-6 win over UC San Diego on Senior Day last weekend. The Gauchos hold firm at No. 10 in both the Collegiate Water Polo Association and Association of College Water Polo Coaches national polls this week.
 
Adam Gyenis and Levi Lentin led Santa Barbara in their win over the Tritons, with Gyenis tallying five goals and Lentin posting career bests in both saves and steals. The goalie's 13 blocks and five swipes led all players in both categories and earned him his first Big West Player of the Week award, making him the first goalkeeper to take home the honor. Lentin's goals-against average is now down to 10.43, the second-best in the conference. Gyenis is now tied for third in The Big West with a career-high 53 goals on the season.
 
While Gyenis has been putting together a monster season in the attack, he is only second on the team in goals and points, with the lead belonging to center Dash McFarland. The Gauchos' captain has 77 goals on the year, tied for the eighth-highest scoring season in program history and the third-best campaign of the 21^st century. Along with Gyenis, Brock Zamanian and Mason Chambliss have been the chief assisters, supplying McFarland with balls to bury in the back of the cage. Zamaninan leads the team and ranks fourth in The Big West with 33 assists, Chambliss ranks fifth in conference with 30.
 
SCOUTING THE BEACH (15-10, 2-2 Big West)
Only one man in The Big West has more goals than McFarland this season, and it is Long Beach State's Robert Lopez Duart. The freshman from Spain has been chasing McFarland's total all season and finally caught him with a seven-goal outburst against Cal State Fullerton in the Beach's last match. Duart also has 27 assists on the season, giving him a conference-best 105 points.
 
Duart owns Long Beach's four highest-scoring games this season, powering the team to 15 wins and a constant place amongst the top 10 teams in the nation. The Beach come into this weekend's matchup ranked No. 7 (tied with Princeton) by the CWPA and No. 8 by the ACWPC.
 
The Beach has been mercurial this season, with big wins over highly rated teams like Stanford, Pepperdine and Princeton but also losses to beatable teams, like Navy and UC San Diego. They are 2-3 in their last five games, with a 10-9 win over UC Irvine and 20-13 thumping of Cal State Fullerton bookending three straight losses, albeit to Stanford, Cal, and USC.