ANNAPOLIS, Md. – The No. 20 Navy water polo team (11-5, 2-2 MAWPC) returns action after a bye week to take on No. 20 Bucknell (6-6, 3-1 MAWPC) on Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. at Kinney Natatorium in Lewisburg, Pa. The game will be live streamed on the
Bison YouTube channel.
Social Media
For more information on Navy water polo, follow the team on Instagram (
@NavyWaterPolo), X / Twitter (
@NavyWaterPolo), and Facebook (
@NavyWaterPolo).
National Ranking
The Midshipmen enter the weekend tied for 20th with Sunday's opponent Bucknell in the Collegiate Water Polo Association national poll. Including the preseason poll, Navy has been ranked all six weeks of the 2024 season. The Mids have risen as high as 17 in the poll, but currently stand at No. 20. The Midshipmen were ranked each week of the year in 2023, starting during the preseason poll, closing out the season at No. 17.
Scouting the Midshipmen
Navy enters the weekend 11-5 overall and 2-2 in the Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference.
Kiefer Black leads the team with a balanced attack, entering the weekend with 95 points on 49 goals and 46 assists. He is five points away from his second consecutive season with 100 points. Last season, Black finished with 125 points, which ranked third in Navy's single-season records. For his career, the sophomore is tied with Carpenter Warren ('16) for 19th all-time with 220 points on 117 goals and 103 assists. He is the sixth player in program history with 100 or more helpers.
Quinn Bartlett and
Michael Heller are tied with 39 points apiece. Bartlett has 23 goals and 16 assists, while Heller is second on the team with 29 goals to go along with 10 helpers.
Luka Sekulic (28) and
Maddox Garrahy (21) each have over 20 scores on the year, while
Holden Seybold (18),
Billy Zech (18),
Henry Williams (14), and
Orion Erwin (11) round out the Mids' double-digit scorers.
Austin Kahn is second on the team with 20 assists with Erwin (12) and Williams (11) chipping in double-digit helpers.
Defensively, Navy primarily used three goalkeepers on the year.
Jack Hightower leads the team with 58 saves, while
Jack Rodoni has added 49 stops. Ryan Much has notched 26 saves in limited action. Hightower leads the team with 20 steals, while
Matt Mai-Prasarnsuk and Black lead all position players with 17 takeaways apiece. Seybold has 15 steals with Bartlett and Kahn following with 14 each. Garrahy leads the team with 36 ejections drawn with Erwin and Zech following with 25 and 21 kickouts drawn, correspondingly.
Scouting the Opponent
Bucknell enters the weekend with a 6-6 overall record, including a 3-1 mark in conference play. Like the Midshipmen, the Bison had a bye week leading up to this weekend. Bucknell will take on George Washington (11:00 a.m.) and Johns Hopkins (5:00 p.m.) on Saturday before facing Navy on Sunday.
On Sunday, Sept. 29, Aleksa Stefanovic recorded six goals and three assists and David Dumitru logged 15 saves to backstop a smothering defensive effort as the Bucknell men's water polo team downed Mercyhurst 20-5 at Kinney Natatorium to improve to 4-1 at home this season.
The Bison used a red-hot start with Hasan Mogultay's goal just 32 seconds into the match that ignited a seven-goal Bucknell flurry in the first four and a half minutes of play. Bucknell couldn't keep up that scoring pace, but they were in complete control the rest of the way as the defense barely allowed Mercyhurst to sniff the goal. The five goals allowed were the fewest by the Bison since a 7-5 win over George Washington in the 2022 MAWPC Tournament semifinals.
Milestone Man
Head coach
Luis Nicolao entered the 2024 season with 492 career wins as a men's head water polo coach, including 90 victories at Navy.
With Navy's win against Concordia, Nicolao recorded his 500th victory as a men's head coach, becoming the eighth coach to reach that mark, joining Ted Newland, former Navy head coach Mike Schofield, Denny Harper, Jovan Vavic, Terry Schroeder, Dante Dettamanti, and Pete Cutino with 500 or more wins.
Two games later, Nicolao reached another milestone, recording his 100th victory as the Navy head coach. He is officially the first coach in NCAA water polo history to lead multiple men's programs to 100 wins.
For his career, Nicolao has 937 career wins between men's and women's programs (101 – Navy men; 402 – Princeton men; 434 – Princeton women) and is 63 victories away from the 1,000-win mark.
Up Next
Following Navy's game with Bucknell, the Midshipmen will participate in the Brown / Harvard Invitational in Providence, R.I. on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19-20. The Mids will take on Mercyhurst, No. 18 Brown, UC Merced, and No. 12 San Jose State.
