This past weekend featured the opening of the men’s water polo team’s season at the Princeton Invitational. After weather concerns cancelled the Sept. 6 matches, the Bison got in the pool the next day to take on Brown and Harvard. After falling to Brown 11-6, the Bison forced overtime against Harvard in a 12-10 loss.

The Bison dropped their first game against Brown, even though they trailed by just two at the half. The Bison were unable to catch up and were outscored 5-2 in the second half. Stefan Aleksic ’16 racked up three goals, one assist, and two ejections drawn in the loss.

The Orange and Blue battled back against Harvard later in the day. The game remained close all the way through, as the teams entered the fourth quarter tied 8-8. As the Bison went down by one, Grant Curry ’18 came up with clutch back-to-back goals with 1:18 left in the game to bring his team up by one. The Crimson managed a game-tying goal with 18 seconds left on the clock, forcing the game into overtime. The Crimson went on to score twice within the first three minutes of overtime, propelling them past the Orange and the Blue.

“I feel that although we had some tough losses our team showed a lot of potential,” Curry said. “The games showed that we have a lot of problems to work out, but luckily we have plenty of time to fix these issues seeing as this was the beginning of the season. We will be working on every phase of our game trying to make ourselves better through this next week and not worrying about who we are playing; just trying to get better as a team.”

Aleksic led the team with seven goals and two assists on the day, followed by Curry’s four goals, three of which occurred against Harvard.

The Bison will get back in the pool this weekend as they host the Bison Invitational. The team will face Washington & Jefferson and Johns Hopkins tomorrow, followed by matches against Mercyhurst and Fordham on Sept. 14. Aleksic looks towards this weekend with optimism.

“As for the Bison Invitational, we are definitely going to work on our weak spots from last weekend,” Aleksic said. “We will focus on our defense, since we had some problems running it through out the last weekend. We need to get better with our fundamentals and pay close attention to details. I think when we master those by the beginning of Bison Invitational, we should be fine and more confident in ourselves. Everyone on the team is fired up and ready to work hard to improve and play better this weekend, and I think as the season progresses we will improve our game a lot.”