Hoosiers go 2-1 in first home tournament

It was a bittersweet homecoming for the No. 11 IU water polo team. In their first home matches of the 2013 season, the Hoosiers won their first and third games of the Fluid Four by a combined total of 31-6, but lost their only match against a ranked opponent.

IU began the invitational Saturday with a 16-5 win in an exhibition match against Montreal club team Dollard Des Ormeaux (DDO). But later that night, the Hoosiers fell to No. 10 Long Beach State 7-4. To conclude the weekend, IU defeated Washington and Jefferson 15-1 Sunday morning.

Ten different players scored in the first and final matches, and 14 total found the net at least once during the weekend.

“It’s looking a lot better,” junior attacker Carson Nestler said of IU’s teamwork. “Every game it gets so much more fluid and smooth with our chemistry, passing, shooting and everything like that.”

Nestler didn’t score against DDO, but made the most of her opportunity Sunday. She scored five of six shots against Washington and Jefferson, which tied the second-best goal-scoring performance in IU history. It marked the 47th time a Hoosier scored at least five goals in a game. Only the ninth time a Hoosier scored as many as six goals, including twice by senior attacker Jakie Köhli.

Nestler didn’t think it felt like anything extraordinary.

“I got in the water and felt good,” she said. “I felt like, ‘Why not play just like any other day?’ I was getting looks. I was getting opportunities. I felt fast and when I needed to, I put the ball in the cage.”

Nestler said she didn’t even realize how close she was to the record until she came out of the game for good in the third quarter.

“Everyone wanted me to go back in to score more to beat it, but that’s not why I was playing,” she said. “I always want to play. You beat a record, that’s fine, but just as long as I’m playing my best, it doesn’t really matter, the numbers.”

The numbers that did matter contributed to IU’s loss against Long Beach State.

Sophomore Shelby Taylor and freshman center Candyce Schroeder scored in the first and second quarters respectively to give IU a 2-0 halftime lead.

Freshman goalkeeper Jessica Gaudreault made 10 big saves in the first half.

“She was solid, but it was part of what we were doing out in front of her,” IU Coach Barry King said. “People were shot-blocking. People were attacking shooters. As soon as we stopped doing it, they started seeing shooting lanes. We just stopped.”

The stoppage King referred to occurred in the second half. The 49ers scored four goals in the third quarter and three in the fourth. Köhli added two scores in the half, but it wasn’t enough.

King said his team’s lack of aggression in the second half is what led to Long Beach State’s comeback.

“We stopped being aggressive going down the pool in our offensive counter attack,” he said. “It all started on the defensive end where we have been terrific in attacking and forcing them into some off-balance stuff. For some reason we started settling back and not attacking them down the pool, not forcing them to take those off-balance looks.

"That just went against us. They want to grind, they want to be in a half-court situation. We want to swim, we want to make them have to play us all over the floor. We just stopped doing that in the second half.”

Nestler thinks her team members will learn from the loss.

“[We learned] that we can definitely play a lot better than we did last night,” she said Sunday. “And we just need to keep working in practice, keep working as a team, and hopefully when we’re in California for spring break we can do some good stuff.”