The East’s Best Clash on Saturday @ Princeton
In the midst of the frenetic collegiate water polo season—with student athletes traversing the coasts and crossing from East to West—a gem of a match takes place today right here in the New York Metropolitan area.
Fordham and Princeton, the East’s top men’s polo programs, will meet at DeNunzio Pool, the Tigers’ New Jersey home. Fordham, currently the nation’s #5 team in the most recent Collegiate Water Polo Men’s Varsity Poll, will tip off against , #11 Princeton at 11am. The match will be shown on ESPN +.
This is the second meeting this season between the two teams; the Rams (14-3; 6-0 MCWPC) hosted Princeton (16-8; 7-1 NWPC) in September, coming away with a 19-16 win. A victory on the road against the Tigers (16-8; 7-1 NEWPC) would give Head Coach Brian Bacharach’s team its first-ever season sweep against Princeton. In the history between the two teams, Fordham has won three time versus 18 losses. It has never beaten the Tigers at DeNunzio.
[At Fordham, Where Lombardi Once Ruled, Water Polo is Now King]
Two of those three Rams victories have come in the teams’ past two meetings. Bacharach, along with coaches Ilija Duretic and Bill Harris—recently elected to the Fordham Hall of Fame where he will join Fordham luminaries Frankie Frisch, Vince Lombardi, Wellington Mara, and Vin Scully—have put together the East’s strongest roster primarily through recruiting overseas. Hungarian Andras Toth (team high 78 goals) is joined by a trio of Italians: Luca Provenziani (53 goals; team-high 62 assists), Alessandro Salipante (26 goals, 30 assists) and Luca Silvestri (35 goals).
The Rams recently returned from a West Coast swing which featured one of this season’s most scintillating matches. #4 Cal beat Fordham 15-14 on a goal by Tomas Perrone with four seconds remaining. On the trip the Rams also dropped a 19-10 decision to #3 Stanford but topped # 6 San Jose State and #9 Long Beach State.
Princeton’s DeNunzio pool—the best water polo venue in the East. Photo: Princeton Athletics
Princeton recently returned from its own trip to California, where they dropped decisions to #1 USC, #2 UCLA and #7 UC San Diego sandwiched around wins over #10 Long Beach State and #16 UC Irvine. So far this season, in addition to exhibition matches against Pro Recco and Ferencvaros, Head Coach Dustin Litvak’s team has played 14 matches against ranked opponents. The point of this is not masochism, though some alums of select Eastern schools (Harvard?) might point out how playing California’s best wrecks your record.
Litvak and his players have embraced the challenge; the only team ranked lower than the Tigers to claim a win were the Crimson, who took a 13-12 decision in DeNunzio in early October—a win that put Harvard at the top of the Northeast Water Polo Conference.
“The only way to get better is to play against teams that are better than you, learn from the video and learn from the experience,” Litvak said last month when discussing his team’s relentless schedule, including matches against the world’s two best professional clubs.
[On The Record: Princeton’s Dustin Litvak]
Leading scorers for Princeton include Adam Peocz (team-high 44 goals, 43 assists), Taylor Bell (42 goals), Finn Le Sieur (37 goals) and JP Ohl (20 goals, team-high 65 assists). In eight home matches this season the Tigers have only suffered the loss to Harvard. In 15 trips to DeNunzio Fordham has yet to top the home team; the closest the Rams came was in November of 2022, an 11-10 overtime loss to the Tigers in an NCAA play-in match.
Unlike past matchups—Fordham and Princeton faced each other in a 2021 NCAA play-in-match, a 17-8 win for the Tigers—you’d have to go back two decades for a comparable contest between the East’s best. In 2004 the #12 Tigers faced a #10 St. Francis Brooklyn team in what was then the Eastern Championship. The winner would go to the NCAA Final Four; the loser would go home.
What took place was an epic struggle. A 2-2 tie after regulation stretched into four overtime periods before Princeton’s Nick Seaver finally solved St. Francis goalie Alexandar Stankovic to give the Tigers a 3-2 win.
Will Fordham vs Princeton tomorrow bring back memories of that all-time classic East Coast matchup? Unlikely, but the talent on these two squads suggest it’s a great preview of top contenders likely to advance to the 2025 NCAA Men’s Water Polo tournament.