IRVINE, Calif. — The No. 11 UC Santa Barbara Men's Water Polo team will get to reap the fruits of their two critical November victories on Friday, enjoying a bye through the first round of The Big West Championship before facing one of the two teams they dispatched earlier this month in the conference semifinal on Saturday. The Gauchos earned the no. 2 seed for this weekend's tournament with wins over No. 3 seed UC Davis and No. 6 seed Cal State Fullerton to round out the regular season and will play the winner of the Aggies' and Titans' first-round match in Saturday's semifinal.
 
LAST TIME OUT
Santa Barbara's final regular-season contest was against their other potential semifinal foe, those sixth-seeded Titans, back on Nov. 9 in Santa Barbara. The Gauchos made the most of a rampant first-half display, turning their 9-2 lead at the break into a 14-11 win on Senior Day, their fourth in as many meetings since Cal State Fullerton revived its water polo program in 2023.
 
Just eight days prior to beating the Titans, the Gauchos defeated UC Davis in Davis, 16-13, the win which gave them the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Aggies to make Santa Barbara's 3-2 conference record superior to UC Davis' 3-2 conference mark in terms of seeding for this weekend's tournament. That win in Davis, powered by four goals and three assists from Brock Zamanian, was the Gauchos' third victory over a team ranked sixth in the nation this season, making them the only Big West team with that many wins over opponents ranked that highly this year.
 
GAUCHOS TO KNOW
Zamanian earned himself Big West Player of the Week honors for his seven-point outing against the Aggies, his second such award of what has been a tremendous final season for the Gauchos. The offense's veteran leader has combined with their young star, Danilo Dragovic to form a formidable one-two punch in attack, and both men enter the conference tournament with 80 points on the season. Dragovic leads in goals, with 61, while Zamanian leads the pair in assists, with 21. Though, Zamanian's 21 helpers are not the team high, as that honor belongs to another young talent: the rising rookie Charlie Johnson. No one-trick pony, Johnson has 43 goals to go with his 25 assists, and Sam McKenzie's 41 tallies makes four Gauchos in the 40-goal club in 2025. Add in a supporting cast that features five more players with at least 20 goals — including 30-goal-scoring centers Kai Ross and Camren Simoncelli — and Santa Barbara has one of their highest-scoring attacks of all time, averaging 13.8 goals per game this season. They have needed it to out-pace some of their opponents this season though, as they are surrendering an average of 11.4 goals a game, despite another strong season from Levi Lentin in goal. A redshirt senior like Zamanian, the Gauchos' captain has made the most of his swan-song season, becoming just the eighth goalie in program history to reach 500 career saves. He was particularly great against both the Aggies and Titans, making a career-high 17 stops against UC Davis and conceding just two goals in his 16 minutes of work against Cal State Fullerton.
 
SCOUTING THE AGGIES
Prior to Santa Barbara upsetting them on Nov. 1, UC Davis had raced out to a 3-0 conference record and up to the no. 6 spot in the national rankings. However, the Aggies followed up their 16-13 loss to the Gauchos with an 11-4 loss at the hands of Long Beach State in a match that decided The Big West Regular Season Championship, though they did beat UC Merced in between those two conference losses. The defeats were the critical results though, costing the Aggies not only the regular season crown but also any first-round bye in this weekend's tournament. They also slipped two spots in the national polls, sitting at no. 8 to start the weekend.
 
Still, the talented Aggies have had two weeks to lick their wounds and enter their first-round matchup with Cal State Fullerton as heavy favorites. UC Davis doubled up the Titans, 22-11, in their regular-season meeting, a season high in goals scored. Center Andrew Hitchcock poured in five of those 22 goals against the Titans; he ranks third on the team with 27 tallies this season. The Aggies' leading scorer, Thomas Kiesling, has 59, five of which came against the Gauchos earlier this month. Oleg Shatskikh, UC Davis' second-leading scorer with 36 goals, was held relatively in check by both Fullerton and Santa Barbara in the regular season, scoring just once against each of them.
 
SCOUTING THE TITANS
Cal State Fullerton is in just its third season since the program's revival in 2023, and while they finished above .500 for the first time in that span (17-15), they are still looking for their first win over a Big West opponent. The closest they came this year was actually their Nov. 9 meeting with the Gauchos, though Santa Barbara's 9-2 halftime lead is more telling than the 14-11 final score. Still, the Titans played well enough to earn votes in the national polls earlier this season.
 
If Fullerton is going to pull the upset, senior utility Jacob Hatch figures to play a key role. He scored twice and dished out three assists when the Titans and Aggies met earlier this year and picked up three goals and an assist when Fullerton visited Santa Barbara two weeks ago. Hatch is one of three Titans with a team-high 70 points coming into the weekend, joined by junior utility Ethan MacLeod and graduate driver Nico D'Angelo. Add in 65-goal scorer Andrew Barnuevo and 45-assist man Togan Ozbek plus the 69 points of Julian Nichols and Fullerton has an offense that can go blow-for-blow with the Gauchos, at least on paper.
 
WHEN AND WHERE TO WATCH
UC Santa Barbara will play in the second semifinal, meaning they will know who awaits the winner in the final by the time they hit the water at 2 p.m. at the Anteater Aquatics Complex in Irvine on Saturday, Nov. 22. Tickets are on sale now at bigwest.org or by clicking here. Fans can also follow from wherever they are by watching live on ESPN+ or through live stats.