SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The No. 10 UC Santa Barbara Men's Water Polo team is back at home for more Big West action on Saturday, hosting No. 16 UC Irvine at Dos Pueblos High School. The Gauchos have the wind in their sails after upsetting the No. 6 team in the country on back-to-back weekends and collecting back-to-back Big West Player of the Week awards afterwards. For the first time since they beat Navy on the season's opening weekend, Santa Barbara is the favorite in a ranked contest after earning their first appearance in the top 10 of the Collegiate Water Polo Association poll this year.
 
LAST TIME OUT
Last Saturday was the Gauchos' 10^th game this season to be decided by two or fewer goals — eight of which have come in their last nine contests — and their seventh decided by a single score (sixth in their last eight games). Recently, Santa Barbara's Cardiac 'Chos have gotten better at winning the tight ones, which has helped them climb the rankings. Last Saturday's upset of the Tritons was the Gauchos' fourth win in the last five games and the third of those earned by a one-goal margin.
 
Santa Barbara made a brilliant start and led, 7-4, at halftime, then held on for dear life to fend off a Triton comeback. Though their visitors tied the game multiple times in the second half, the Gauchos never trailed. Brock Zamanian and Danilo Dragovic paced the offense with three goals and an assist each, but the defensive effort anchored by goalkeeper Levi Lentin was arguably more impressive. Santa Barbara became just the fifth team to hold UC San Diego to 10 goals or fewer and only the second not named UCLA, USC or Stanford to manage the feat this season.
 
GAUCHOS TO KNOW
The Big West named Lentin their Player of the Week for his 10-save, three-steal performance against his hometown team last weekend. The redshirt senior now also leads the conference with a .429 save percentage on the season. He ranks second in goals-against average (11.0) and steals per game (1.3). That ball-hawking ability was a key to Santa Barbara's defensive stand on Saturday; his steal shut down the Tritons' penultimate possession of the game.
 
On the final possession, Landon Lassahn made a huge field block to secure the win for the Gauchos; he leads the conference with 11 of those on the season. Speaking of leading the conference, no one in The Big West has been responsible for more goals than Dragovic. The sophomore attacker has a conference-best 51 goals and 13 assists to top the conference points chart. No team has kept him from scoring in over a month now. With freshman Charlie Johnson enjoying a phenomenal 37-goal season, the Gauchos have a young duo in attack. Even better, they also have a veteran duo in the form of Zamanian and Sam McKenzie. McKenzie has 37 goals and 20 assists, just like Johnson, while Zamanian has 42 goals and has only been held scoreless once in the last month. Even then, he assisted three goals in the one game he did not score.
 
SCOUTING THE ANTEATERS
No. 16 UC Irvine comes into the weekend with about as opposite of a momentum as possible, having lost their last three games and tumbled down the rankings. When these two teams last met, a one-goal victory for the Anteaters, Santa Barbara was ranked 17^th and Irvine eighth. Since then, the Anteaters have beaten just one ranked opponent (compared to the Gauchos' four). Worse still, UC Irvine lost to Division-III Claremont-Mudd-Scripps two weekends ago (though the Stags were ranked 19^th at the time). They dropped their Big West opener at home to UC Davis, 15-12, and were beaten by Princeton, 9-8, at home Wednesday night.
 
If the Gauchos are going to get their first win over the Anteaters since 2022 on Saturday, they will have to contain Irvine's top two threats: senior Luka Krstic and junior Johann Thrall. Both had second-half hat tricks to power Irvine's comeback win back in September, with Kristic scoring the game-tying goal and Thrall the game-winner in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter. Krstic also had a hat-trick in last season's triple-overtime marathon in Irvine.
 
WHEN AND WHERE TO WATCH
Saturday's game will begin at 12 noon from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta. Admission is free and open until the venue's capacity is reached. Fans can also catch all the action from anywhere, live on ESPN+ or by following along with live stats.