<\/p>\n
The ninth-ranked 49ers battled hard in their season opener against top-ranked USC, but the highly-touted Trojans overwhelmed the 49ers and came away with a 12-3 win over the Beach at the Long Beach State Campus Pool. The match was standing room only as the 49ers set an attendance record with over 490 people in attendance.<\/p>\n
USC has now won 30 straight games since the start of last season. The Trojans were undefeated and won both the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation and national championship a year ago. No. 9 Long Beach State (0-1) headed into Saturday’s match looking for a dramatic upset over No. 1 USC (1-0). The Trojans were first on the board with a goal from Shea Buckner. Peter Kurzeka and Justin Rappel each added goals for USC and the 49ers trailed 3-0 after the first. USC scored another two goals early in the second period to take a 5-0 lead. A shot from sophomore Shane Luth at 5:28 in the second period gave the Beach their first goal of the game. USC scored another four goals to take a 9-1 halftime lead. In the third period, the Trojans scored first yet again, but junior Alexsandr Petrovic notched his first goal of the season with 6:50 remaining in the third period. The Trojans scored their final two goals in the latter-half of the third period to take a 12-2 lead. Rappel and Matthew Burton led all scorers with three goals apiece. Senior Kevin Mundia finished off the scoring for the Beach with a beautiful goal in the fourth period. Senior goalkeeper Derek Wiebe-Bailey had a game-high seven saves. Wiebe-Bailey set the Long Beach State all-time mark for saves last season with 282. Up next for the Beach is the annual Alumni game. The 49ers and alumni will face off Sunday, September 13, at 12:00 p.m. PT.<\/p>\n From LBSU reports <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In their home opener, the Long Beach State men’s water polo team lost 12-3 to top-ranked USC, in a standing room only blowout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3306"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3306"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}