Oct. 30, 2005
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- The 12th-ranked Navy water polo team jumped out to a 6-4 halftime advantage and held on for a 10-8 victory in the title game of the CWPA Southern Division Championship. The win moves Navy's overall record to 20-6 overall and gives Navy the top seed in the CWPA Eastern Division Championship to be held on Nov. 12-13, in Boston, Mass. The winner of the Eastern Division Championship will advance to the NCAA Tournament on Dec. 3-4, in Lewisburg, Pa.
Navy used a two-goal spurt midway through the first quarter to take the lead for good, after the contest had been tied at two just over three minutes into the game. Navy's Alex Ratcliffe (Coronado, Calif.) scored on a pretty fast-break goal to give the Mids the lead for good with 1:48 to play in the first stanza. Just over a minute later, Andrew Bingham (Huntington Beach, Calif.) gave Navy a 4-2 advantage. Princeton, however, responded with an extra-man goal, one of five the Tigers scored in the contest, to cut the margin to one at 4-3 after one quarter.
But Navy responded with the first two goals of the second quarter, one coming from Aaron Recko (Livingston, Mont.) and the other from Ratcliffe for a 6-3 lead, before Princeton's Zach Beckmann got behind the Navy defense and connected with just over a minute left to cut the halftime margin to 6-4.
Navy again went up by three goals at 7-4 early in the third quarter on freshman Michael Mulvey's (Carlsbad, Calif.) first goal of the game. Princeton rallied and cut the Navy advantage to one at 7-6 on two goals by John Stover, the latter coming with 3:49 to play, but Navy ended the quarter by tallying the last two goals of the frame, both by Ratcliffe, for a 9-6 lead after three quarters.
Princeton would get no closer than two goals the rest of the way, and Jordan Gentry (San Antonio, Texas) tallied a big goal for Navy with 5:49 to play to push the Navy lead back to three. Princeton scored the final goal with 31 seconds left, but could get no closer as the Mids held on for their ninth straight victory. Navy has now beaten Princeton twice in a row, after losing to the Tigers four straight times from the beginning of 2004 to Oct. 1, 2005. It also marked the first time since the 2001 and 2002 seasons that Navy has beaten the Tigers twice in a row.
Navy was led by senior All-America candidate Alex Ratcliffe, who tallied five goals. Gentry netted two goals, while Mulvey, Recko and Bingham scored once each. Ratcliffe now has scored 51 goals on the season to push his career total to 188 and into seventh place on the school's all-time goals scored list.
Navy will enter the Eastern Division Championship as the top seed, and will battle Iona in its first game of the championship on Saturday, Nov. 12, at 9:00 a.m., in Blodgett Pool at Harvard University. If the Mids can get past Iona, it will play the winner of Brown and Bucknell later that night. St. Francis (NY) is the second seed, Princeton the third seed and Brown is the fourth seed.
# GO NAVY #
