No. 1 Cal Water Polo Scores 33 Goals in One Game; How Other Bears' Teams Compare
The top-ranked Cal men’s water polo team opened its season over the weekend in Annapolis, Maryland, laying waste to four over-matched opponents at the Navy Open.
The defending national champions outscored Johns Hopkins, Iona, Princeton and Navy by a combined margin of 104 goals to 26.
Most remarkable of the four outings was Cal’s 33-4 win over Johns Hopkins on Saturday morning, with George Avakian and reigning national player of the year Nikolaos Papanikolaou each netting five goals.
It was most goals the Bears have scored in a game at least 1998, according to Cal Athletics.
It got us to wondering about the most prolific scoring games by other Cal teams. Here are a few that jump out:
FOOTBALL: 127 points vs. Saint Mary’s College, Oct. 9, 1920. This was the first of five straight Andy Smith teams that posted undefeated records. The Wonder Teams were 44-0-4 during that span, and the 1920 squad outscored its opponents 510-14, including a 28-0 rout of Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.
FOOTBALL (modern era - post WWII): 86 points vs. Pacific, Sept. 7, 1991. Mike Pawlawski threw six touchdown passes and coach Bruce Snyder’s team — also featuring Russell White, Brian Treggs and Jerrott Willard — went on to a 10-2 final record, whipping Clemson 37-13 in the New Year’s Day Citrus Bowl. Their total of 443 points was the program’s most since 1920 — a spa of 71 years.
MEN’S BASKETBALL: 127 points vs. Oklahoma City, Jan. 3, 1972. A curious stretch of three games for the Bears, who bookended this performance by scoring just 57 points four days earlier vs. Temple, then 63 four days later vs. Washington. In other words, they had seven more points vs. OK City than they totaled in the other two.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: 117 points vs. Sacramento State, Dec. 6, 2015. Kristine Anigwe scored 43 points for the Bears, and you’d think the Hornets would have had enough of her and Cal after this game. But a year later they returned to Haas Pavilion only to have Anigwe post a school-record 50 points against them.
BASEBALL: 29 runs at Arizona State, April 26, 1986. Coach Bob Milano’s team clubbed a school-record eight home runs in this one, three of them by future major leaguer Kevin Maas, who also scored runs. Lance Blankenship, another future big leaguer, had six hits, scored six times and set a program record with 15 total bases in the 29-6 rout.
SOFTBALL: 26 runs at Stanford, 1993. Coach Diane Ninemire’s squad came back to score 22 runs the very next game vs. the Cardinal. Combined score: 48-2. The Bears were led by future Olympian Michele Granger, who won 30 games, struck out a school-record 484 batters and threw nine of her career 25 no-hitters as a senior.
RUGBY: 176 points vs. Stanford, Jan. 26, 2013. It’s impossible to know for sure if this is the official record for most points scored in a Cal rugby match. The Bears’ program has been nationally elite for decades and their record book only lists scores back to 1999. But in that near quarter-century, we found nothing more prolific than the 176-0 win over the rival Cardinal on the day the Bears reopened Witter Rugby Field after three years. This was not the worst Cal-Stanford rugby outcome. In 2001, the Cardinal made headlines by forfeiting the match — the first in the century-old rivalry. According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Stanford coach Franck Boivert made the decision because his team was “very afraid to get injured.”
MEN’S SOCCER: The Cal men’s soccer program dates back to at least 1950, but no single-game scoring record is found on the team’s official website.
WOMEN’S SOCCER: 12 goals vs. James Madison, Sept. 1, 2000. Sophomore Laura Schott scored a school-record four goals and chipped in an assist in the 12-0 victory. Schott went on to score 23 goals, tying Cal’s still-standing single-season record.
Cover photo of Cal sophomore Roberto Valeraby Catharyn Hayne, KLC fotos
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo