The top teams in the Northeast Water Polo Conference (NWPC) gather in the Northeast this weekend for a slate of matches that will determine who seizes control of the East’s most competitive men’s polo conference.

Only a handful of conference contests will remain after action today and tomorrow at Brown’s Katherine Moran Aquatics Center in Providence and Harvard’s Blodgett Pool and MIT’s Zesiger Center Pool in Cambridge. For Harvard (20-3; 4-1 NWPC) and Princeton (19-6; 4-1 NWPC)—tied for #11 in the most recent Collegiate Water Polo Association Varsity Men’s Poll—#20 St. Francis Brooklyn (11-4; 4-1 NWPC) and Brown (15-11; 2-2 NWPC) this is a prime opportunity to ascend to the top of the NWPC standings.

Who will represent the conference in this year’s national championship will not be decided until November 21 with the NWPC finals at Princeton’s DeNunzio pool. But seeding matters; the conference’s top team gets a bye into the second round and has advanced to the championship final every season since the NWPC was launched in 2016.

Princeton vs Harvard is the match to watch

The weekend’s marquee match-up is Harvard hosting Princeton—and it leads off this weekend’s action at 9 a.m. today at Blodgett, This is a rematch from earlier this month when the Crimson stormed the Tigers’ home pool to come away with a 10-8 win. The visitors pulled ahead by three goals in the second period and never trailed to beat Princeton for the fourth straight time and eighth of the past nine since 2017.

[Princeton vs. Harvard on ESPN+]

Saturday’s early match promises to be the weekend’s most competitive; both the Crimson and the Tigers just returned from West Coast swings. Harvard, coached by Ted Minnis, went 3-1, its only blemish a 13-10 loss to #7 UC Santa Barbara. That defeat snapped a 10-match win streak for the Crimson.

Princeton—led by Dustin Litvak—went 3-3 in their second West Coast swing of the season. The Tigers had previously traveled out to California in September, where they swept three matches against ranked opponents. This trip their three losses were to higher ranked squads—#2 Cal, #7 Pacific and #10 San Jose State.

That Princeton faced stiffer competition out West than its Ivy League contemporary has been a feature of Litvak’s tenure. Since he took the Princeton head job in 2018 when Luis Nicolao, longtime Tiger men’s and women’s coach, departed for Navy, Litvak’s teams have faced CWPA Top Ten ranked opponents a total of 17 times. In the same period, Harvard has played Top Ten teams eight times. In the Crimsons’ run to an undefeated regular season in 2019—the last time they competed—Minnis’ squad faced, and beat, one CWPA’s Top Ten opponent: UC San Diego, which at the time was ranked #9.

By comparison, Brown and St. Francis had each faced CWPA Top Ten opponents 11 times the past three seasons.

Not that Princeton’s tougher schedule has helped them against Harvard. The one win during Litvak’s tenure came at the end of the 2018 season, when the Tigers upset the Crimson in the 2018 NWPC final to qualify for NCAAs for the first time since Nicolao left. But the Tigers should be confident facing Harvard at home. Freshman Roko Pozaric (team-high 52 goals, 32 steals, 29 assists) and junior Keller Mahoney (49 goal, 32 assists, 36 ejections drawn) have been driving the Princeton offense. On defense Princeton is backstopped by Billy Motherway (9-1 record, 111 saves) and Antonio Knez (10-5, 132 saves).

Driving the Harvard offense are juniors Michael Sonsini and Alex Tsotadze. Junior Noah Hodge is the Crimson’s leading netminder, two years after he backstopped his team to their third NWPC title in the last four years. A notable freshman is Andrej Basica, a 6-4 attacker who is a prospect for the Serbian national team.

St. Francis idle at the worst time

The Terriers will roll into Blodgett for a 5 p.m. match against the Crimson after an 11:30 a.m. meeting with MIT. They are the only NWPC team to beat Minnis’ side in regular season play since Brown accomplished the feat back on October 6, 2018—a streak of 11 straight Harvard conference win.  A 12-10 victory on October 2 was Head Coach Ilija Duretic’s biggest in his first season behind the bench. What would make this a memorable campaign is if the Terriers—who haven’t qualified for the NCAAs since 2013, when Duretic was a freshman–jump back into the national championship picture.

[The Terriers of St. Francis Brooklyn Are Back!]

St. Francis’ biggest challenge this weekend may be a long layoff. While their three NWPC rivals spent last weekend in California, Duretic’s players were moored at home with only a scrimmage scheduled against Wagner that was canceled. To put it in starker terms; SFC has played one match in the past three weeks—a 22-15 win over NWPC bottom dweller Iona—while Brown and Harvard have played six and Princeton nine. This puts the Brooklyn team at a disadvantage; in a typical season, the Terriers would make a trip out to California, much like Brown, Harvard and Princeton just did. After a year layoff due to COVID, this is not at all a typical year.

In junior Dominik Hevesi the Terriers have one of the conference’s most dynamic offensive weapons. He is ably assisted by Baptiste Oliveri, a junior from Marseille, who provide great energy all over the pool. In goal Duretic has rotated sophomore Luka Bogdanov and Manuel Diaz and junior Djordje Stoiljkovic.

Given the talent assembled by former Terrier coach Boris Dimitrov, SFC has a shot this weekend to overcome its recent inactivity and tag the Crimson with a second conference loss. But it won’t be easy; the past four seasons Harvard has only lost a contest at Blodgett to Brown (twice).

The Bears have the most to gain

With the Crimson, Tigers and Terriers tied with 4-1 conference marks, a winning weekend for Head Coach Felix Mercado’s side against Iona, Princeton and St. Francis could vault the Bears to the top of the conference for the first time since 2015.

After a slow start that saw the Bears drop matches to Navy, George Washington and Wagner, Mercado has his team ready for a strong stretch run. Sophomore Conner Enright (team-leading 34 goals, 23 assists) and senior Andrew Penner (28 goals, team-high 35 exclusions drawn) are top performers for Brown which has won six of its last nine matches. During a 2-2 trip to California that saw the Bears beat #19 Air Force and played competitive matches against San Jose State (a 16-10 loss) and Cal Baptist (18-14 defeat).

They also have the benefit of facing St. Francis twice in the season’s closing moments, which is a problem for the Terriers. The teams were scheduled to play on October 3—the day after the Terriers’ big win versus Harvard—but a pool malfunction caused a postponement. After not beating a ranked opponent all year, last week’s win in the West against the Falcons signals that Mercado’s youthful squad—he has eleven freshman and sophomores on a roster of 20—has begun to gel.

At Brown’s Katherine Moran Aquatics Center
- Iona vs. Brown, 3.pm. – October 30
- St. Francis vs. Brown, 10 a.m. – October 31
- Princeton vs. Brown, 3 p.m. – October 31

At Harvard’s Blodgett Pool
- Princeton vs. Harvard, 9 a.m. – October 30
- St. Francis vs. Harvard, 5 p.m. – October 30
- Iona vs. Harvard, 3 p.m. – October 31

At MIT’s Zesiger Center Pool
- St. Francis vs. MIT, 11:30 a.m. – October 30
- Princeton vs. MIT, 7 p.m. – October 30
- Iona vs. MIT, 10 a.m. – October 31