Losing woes extend for Hoosiers in San Diego

After starting the year with high aspirations, the losing woes continued for the IU women's water polo team this weekend as the 2-6 squad lost three of its four matches at the Triton Invitational in San Diego.\nThe No. 13 Hoosiers began the weekend with promise. In their first match of the invitational, IU defeated the University of Redlands 8-7 in overtime. Senior Bridget McKeon clinched the Hoosiers' second win of the year, scoring the game-winning goal in the third overtime period.\n"The win was good for team morale, but we felt pretty confident going into the game," said senior Janis Pardy.\nThe second contest of the day signaled a turning point for the Hoosiers. IU lost the first of a three-game skid, 9-7, despite a 3-1 lead early in the second period against No. 8 San Diego State University.\nJunior Brooke Zimmerman and senior Clare Meadows tallied the first two goals in the first period, while sophomore Brittany Estrada added the third goal less than a minute into the second period. The Aztecs then added two goals to the Hoosiers' one, and IU took a 4-3 lead into halftime.\nAfter trading goals late in the third period, the Aztecs scored five-straight goals to take a 9-5 lead. Before the final buzzer, the Hoosiers added goals from junior Kristin Zernicke and Meadows, but it was not enough for a victory. Zimmerman added a bright spot by finishing the game with her first career hat trick.\n"We strung together some really good things that we can use to build on during the year," said coach Barry King. "It's a tough situation to come out here and play four games in about 28 hours. It was a big test for us physically, and we were kind of worn down by the end."\nAfter splitting the first two games on the first day of the tournament, the Hoosiers fell to the No. 17-ranked University of California-San Diego 9-3, and No. 1 University of California-Davis 6-2, finishing eighth place in the tournament. All six of the Hoosiers' losses on the year have come against ranked opponents.\n"I think that our record is the way it is because it's the beginning of the season," Meadows said. "We have a lot of new players that we're just getting used to reading."\nThe loss to UC-San Diego put the Hoosiers into the seventh-place game against UC-Davis.\n"We had the opportunities to do well but we had a lot of problems finishing this weekend," Pardy said. "During the last game against UC-Davis, we shot 27 times and scored twice."\nThis weekend, the Hoosiers will compete in their third four-game invitational in three weeks with a trip to Princeton for the Princeton Invitational. There, the Hoosiers will face off against Bucknell, Brown, Harvard and No. 8 Princeton.\n"We're going to try and put together four strong games and try to put together the lessons we learned from this weekend to step up and come out on top," King said.\nThough the Hoosiers' record stands at 2-6, the members of the team are not worried about the rest of the year, King said.\n"The focus is to be as good of a team as we can be in April," King added. "Our first three quarters against San Diego State were by far the best that we've played so far in the year. We're going to focus on those three quarters, what we did really well there, and try to reinforce those things to get better"