Photo by: Tony Leon/ActionWestPhotography.com

WHITTIER, Calif. – The Whittier College Men's Water Polo team returned to Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) play Wednesday night as they rolled past Occidental College 13-6. 

Whittier has now won four of their last five as they improve to 8-10, 3-2 SCIAC.

The Purple & Gold jumped out in front in the first quarter adding three unanswered all coming from Hans Zdolsek (Linkoping, Sweden).  Leading 3-0 after the first quarter, Zdolsek came back to add his fourth in a row to begin the second but Oxy's Cian Concannon would stop the run with an unassisted strike. 

Kyle Aguilar (Corona, Calif.) and Youssef Zaaza (Sherwood Forest, Calif.) added to the Poet lead with another two strikes moving the score to 6-1 but again Oxy would bounce back adding their second of the first half cutting the deficit to four at the break.

In the third, the Poets tacked on another four goals with Zdolsek adding the first two of the frame and then closing out the period with his seventh of the game.  This moved the score to 10-4 and from there the Poets cruised outscoring the Tigers 3-2 over the final eight minutes with insurance connections coming from Eric Borunda (Whittier, Calif.) and Malcolm Niskey (El Cajon, Calif.).

Murat Ersoz (Istanbul, Turkey) got the start for the Poets and played all 32:00 minutes finishing with 13 saves.

Whittier was outshot on the game 29-28 and was 0-for-7 on power-play opportunities.        

Whittier remains in conference action this Saturday, October 13 when they travel to take on the University of Redlands beginning at 11:00am.