IU Coach Ryan Castle released the 2016-17 women’s water polo schedule this past Wednesday. IU will look for another strong season after reaching the Collegiate Water Polo Association championship last year.
Of the 17 teams IU will face this season, all but two of them were ranked in the top 25 at the conclusion of last season. Five of those teams were also ranked in the top 10, most notably No. 1 USC and No. 2 UCLA.
The journey back to the championship starts on the west coast, first with the University of California Santa Barbara, which Castle called one of the nation’s toughest teams.
“UCSB is the defending Big West Champion, Hawaii is a perennial top 10 team, and UCLA is always a national title contender,” Castle said in a release from IU Athletics. “This will give us an opportunity to test ourselves early on and help us develop as a team.”
The conference slate begins on the road at No. 5 Michigan on March 25, the rematch of the CWPA championship last season where the Wolverines defeated the Hoosiers.
One of Castle’s challenging tests this season will be the multitude of games in a short period of time. Castle never experienced this kind of format at Hawaii, his previous stop.
“Under this four-game weekend format, anything can happen,” Castle said. “You don’t have the same amount of time to thoroughly prepare for your opposition, and a lot depends on the order the conference schedules the games. But, that in itself is a challenge we have to rise up and meet.”
This season the CWPA Championship weekend will be in Bloomington in late April, and at its conclusion, the 2017 Division I Water Polo Championships at the IU Natatorium at IUPUI in mid-May.
The Hoosiers’ last appearance in the NCAA Championship was in 2014, when they finished in seventh place.
T.C. Malik
