(Walnut, CA) Another successful weekend of games was recently completed for The Mt. SAC Men's Water Polo Team completed another successful weekend, scoring 66 goals in the 46th Annual Mt. SAC Water Polo Tournament at The Marie T. Mills Aquatic Center Friday and Saturday (Sept. 20, 21).

The Mounties defeated Southwestern (25-1), Fullerton (23-9) and Sierra (9-5) and dropped a close game, 9-8, to Orange Coast in the tournament. 

"We have a really strong team and probably are 18-20 players deep," Mt. SAC Men's Water Polo Head Coach Marc Ruh said. "These guys are really unselfish and 13-20 of those players are going to be big impact guys in the next few weeks."

After a recent four-win tournament in Pennsylvania along with this past weekend's games, the Mounties (8-2) have now amassed an amazing 172 goals, for a 17.2 per game average, in 10 games.

Leading the charge in the four games in the tourney was attacker Dillon Mannion with nine goals. Mannion, who did not play in the first game, scored four goals in each of the second and third games.

"We gained a mass amount of players this year and I was hungry to play," Mannion said. "We have so many people and a deep bench that can fill in the attacker role too."

Ian Tauer added eight goals, while Kyle Green scored six and Jarrett Barker, Brandon Shew and Brandon Knapp had five each.

"I've been playing with a lot of these guys in club since I was 14," Barker said. "That trip (Pennsylvania) helped so much for team bonding."

After the first two blowout wins over Southwestern and Fullerton on Friday, the Mounties then suffered the one-goal loss to OCC on Saturday and final 9-5 win over Northern California power Sierra.

"We had two fairly easy games on Friday and everybody is happy and everybody gets playing time," Ruh said. "Then you come into the games on Saturday where the games were much harder, there's guys that are getting a lot less playing time and now it's a little more difficult. The bench got shorter and the dynamic changed a little bit."

A big addition this season for Ruh and the team is the addition of volunteer assistant coach, Anthony Magdaleno, a mental skils for performance specialist.  "He has been very helpful for the team this season." Magdaleno was with the swim program last season.

Mt. SAC begins South Coast Conference action Wednesday (Sept. 25), hosting El Camino College (4-5, 0-1). Game time is 4:30 pm.

Follow Mt. SAC Men's Water Polo on twitter @mtsacaquatics

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For additional information, please contact the Mt. SAC Sports Information Office at 909.274.4630.