Team looks to take Eastern Championship

The IU water polo team will travel to Cambridge, Mass., this weekend to compete in the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s Eastern Championship.

The fourth-seeded Hoosiers will take on fifth-seeded Brown University at 1:30 p.m. Friday at Harvard University’s Blodgett Pool. The Hoosiers beat Brown 9-8 earlier this season in the Aztec Invitational in San Diego.

IU water polo coach Barry King said for the Hoosiers to beat Brown again, they will have to show more patience compared to the first time the teams played.

“There were periods of that first game against them where we completely controlled and were on the verge of breaking the game wide open,” King said in an e-mail. “Then we sped up too much, and we shortened our own clock way too much.”

But King said if the team plays the way it did in the final 14 minutes of the Michigan game last weekend, it can win the Eastern Championship and get the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

“It’s pretty much that simple,” he said. “That’s as well as we’ve played as a group, offensively and defensively, all season.”

– By Andrew Wyder