{"id":469307,"date":"2026-09-19T19:18:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T19:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/469307\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T19:18:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T19:18:17","slug":"no-6-mens-water-polo-opens-mpsf-invite-with-win-over-no-14-uc-santa-barbara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/469307\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 6 Men\u2019s Water Polo Opens MPSF Invite With Win Over No. 14 UC Santa Barbara"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>STANFORD, Calif. \u2013 Long Beach State jumped out to a big lead early and welcomed the return of <a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-water-polo\/roster\/gabi-acosta\/10113\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"10113\" target=\"_blank\">Gabi Acosta<\/a>, as the two-time defending Big West Player of the Year had five goals as the Beach rolled to a 16-9 win over UC Santa Barbara.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nLong Beach State (7-1) had gotten off to a great start to the season without <a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-water-polo\/roster\/gabi-acosta\/10113\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"10113\" target=\"_blank\">Gabi Acosta<\/a>, but got a big lift from the return of the big man who dominated the action with five goals on the night for Long Beach State against UC Santa Barbara (11-6).<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe Beach got off to a quick start, taking advantage of a first-possesion power play for a 1-0 lead after a goal by Oliver Sudar, and then goals from Marc Frigola and Acosta pushed the lead to 3-0 before the Gauchos got on the board.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nLeading 4-2 after the first quarter, the Beach scored the only three goals of the second quarter, with Sudar, Frigola and Acosta again finding the net as the Beach took a 7-2 lead. A busy third saw more offense with both teams scoring five goals.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-water-polo\/roster\/corbin-stanley\/10121\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"10121\" target=\"_blank\">Corbin Stanley<\/a> opened the fourth quarter with a goal, making the score 13-7 and the Beach cruised the rest of the way to a 16-9 win. <a href=\"https:\/\/longbeachstate.com\/sports\/mens-water-polo\/roster\/william-whitstone\/10124\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"10124\" target=\"_blank\">William Whitstone<\/a> made eight saves in goal for Long Beach State.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nWith the win, Long Beach State will face the hosts, No. 3 Stanford in the second game, the first of two on Saturday. That match is scheduled for 12:20 p.m.<br \/>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STANFORD, Calif. \u2013 Long Beach State jumped out to a big lead early and welcomed the return of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-469307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}