Owls Close Out Regular Season with Rout of Santa Monica

Glendora, CA - The Citrus College Men's Water Polo team closed out their regular season on Wednesday afternoon with a route of Santa Monica College in Western State Conference action. The Owls scored the first six points and never looked back in a 23-7 victory.

Of the first six goals scored by Citrus, sophomore Daniel Velazquez scored three of them and added an assist on the other. Santa Monica would break up the 6-0 run, but the Owls got scores from freshman Panagiotis Giannoulias and sophomore James Adams to finish up the quarter with an 8-1 lead.

Santa Monica would show signs of life in the second quarter, scoring four of the first six goals, but the Owls didn't allow another Corsairs goal over the final 4:39 of the half, and got scores from freshman Jonathan Wong, sophomore Gregory Titizian, and Giannoulias to go into halftime leading 13-5.

The final two quarters played out much like the first. The Owls held Santa Monica to two more goals over the final 16 minutes of action, while going on to score 10 more, for the 16 goal win. Giannoulias would finish with a game high five goals, while Velazquez had four, four assists, and three exclusions drawn. In goal, sophomore starter Drake Santos had nine saves in two halves of play, while freshman Joshua Ocampo was solid, stopping six of the seven shots he faced while playing the third quarter.

With the win, Citrus improves to 16-10 overall and 3-1 in WSC play. The Owls finish the regular season in a 3-way tie for first place with Ventura College and Cuesta College. Citrus lost the three-way tie breaker and will enter next weekend's Western State Conference Championship Tournament as the #3 seed, and will take on #2 Ventura College on Friday November 4^th at 1:00 PM in San Luis Obispo on the campus of Cuesta College.