One of the unique things about the Cal Lutheran women's water polo team -- currently ranked No. 2 in Division III, and hosting No. 1 Occidental today at 5 p.m. -- is the number of top-level Division I programs on its schedule.
The Regals (14-12, 5-0 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) played seven schools in the preseason top 20, including four of the current top eight -- UCLA, Cal, San Jose State and Arizona State.
"We always tease the basketball coaches," says CLU coach Craig Rond, "when we're playing the big girls, (saying) 'Well, it would be like you going and playing UCLA this afternoon. That's what we're going to do.' And they laugh."
That's not exactly the reaction of Rond's players.
"A lot of us thought our coach was crazy, initially," recalls junior Joy Cyprian, one of the CLU captains. "I was actually board when I looked at our schedule initially ... and I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what to say.
"Personally, it's really hard, because I never like playing a team that is really below our talent, because it makes me feel bad. ... And I even more so don't like being that team."
Not surprisingly, there's a method to the madness.
"It's another note I took from some of the more elite Division III schools," says Rond, recalling the birth of the program in 2004. "I started looking at who they were playing and said, 'Gosh, the top SCIAC schools, when you look at the early season, they all have kind of crummy records. But they're all playing really tough Division I and Division II schools to get ready for SCIAC."
This is feasible -- in a way it wouldn't be for, say, the CLU football or basketball teams -- for a couple of reasons. One is that, since women's water polo remains a relatively young sport, the gap between the programs, while significant, is not impossibly large. The other relates to the very nature of the sport.
"This is not football, where your playbook is 300 pages long," says Rond. "Water polo is a very fundamental-first sport. You can take a couple of pages from the national team, and there's not a whole lot of difference from what the 14-and-unders are trying to accomplish. ...
"There's not a lot of secrets. You know what's coming. And the difference between Division I and Division III, really in any sport but particularly for us, is size and speed. You know what it is you're trying to do, but you have a girl in there that's 6-foot-2, and you're trying to defend her at 5-foot-5."
Junior Meredith Butte, who played at Cal before transferring to CLU, notes one of the big differences between the levels is that the Division I programs essentially go year-round, while Division III water polo is basically a four-month undertaking.
"In regards to playing in the pool ... the way that Coach Rond runs his practice is very similar to a Division I school," says Butte. "He's implementing the same kinds of tactics, and intensity, and drills, and I think that's why we're so successful. We don't give ourselves the excuse, 'Oh, we're just a D-3 team."
So each side can understand what the other is doing, even if one is going to be able to do it at a very different level. Not surprisingly, CLU was 0-7 against those ranked teams, but the Regals still believe they benefited from the experience.
"Our schedule has been incredibly challenging," says Rond, "but we've done it with a pretty good balance. We'll go to a tournament, and there are two teams that we are just not even going to be able to compete with but can learn a lot from, and then balance that with the two teams that we can take what we learned against the big girls or big boys" -- CLU's men play Division I opponents, as well -- "and be successful against the Division IIs and Division IIIs."
Butte notes, "no one likes to go into games knowing that you probably don't have that great of a chance of winning. But if you kind of step back and look at the perspective of things ... you're literally getting to play Olympians. ...
"I think our first big D-I game was Cal, where I first went to school. And going in there, it's OK; maybe we're a little slow. And then next game, we played UCLA, and we picked it up a little more, and then we played Northridge, and picked it up a little more.
"It kind of forces the team to start reacting quicker and start playing on a D-I pace. And to tell you the truth, once we slowed the game down and played the way we know how to play, there really wasn't too much difference other than the speed and size of the girls. Tactically, I believe a lot of our players could probably match up fairly well."
Says Cyprian, "It's a huge learning experience. You don't learn how to play against someone who's 6-2 on your own team. ... But at the end of the day, it's supposed to be fun. And when you get to score -- I remember scoring against UCLA and I was very happy about that, that I was able to accomplish something. So when I see my teammates do that, you know, you realize that you really are doing something right, that our coaches are teaching us the right things."
And now that CLU is in the all-Division-III part of the schedule, the dividends are even more obvious.
"We heard it the other day they got out against a Division III opponent," notes assistant coach Matt Warshaw. "One of our girls said, 'Gosh, all those girls seem really small.' And we said, 'Well, yeah. You're used to playing the UCLA team. There's seven Olympians on that UCLA roster. So you basically played Team USA on Saturday, and then on Sunday, you played a Division III team and had a level playing ground."
The two teams: While the women's team has raced to prominence, the men's water polo program has had a more gradual climb. This year's 14-13 season was the first winning record for the six-year-old program, which reached the championship game of the SCIAC tournament before falling to Pomona-Pitzer 12-9.
In one respect, the men's program does not have the same opportunity for success as the women: Because of an insufficient number of programs, there's not a separate Division III championship.
"The man haven't had that one avenue," says Rond, "where maybe the can get a piece of the pay and put that ring on and say, look, we've accomplished something. ... They have to get it done at the Division I level."
But there are other reasons the men's program has grown more slowly, Rond says.
"Certainly, there were far more men's programs at the top," he says, noting the more established nature of men's water polo, "and trying to peck away at them has been a little tougher. And then, honestly, the guys were a little slower to come around to some of our philosophies. But I think they're starting to finally appreciate our philosophies, and what it is we're trying to teach. So they've been behind the women all the way."
But as both teams have grown, they've also grown in their support and respect for each other.
"We weren't very competitive," says Rond, "so neither one really had a desire to watch the other one compete. But now that the teams have these natural rivals in SCIAC, the guys like to see the girls beat those rivals, and the girls like to come out and see the guys beat those rivals. Because there's a little bad taste. There's blood. ...
"It's just coming of age this year, now that the women have been in a SCIAC championship game and had the bad taste of an awful one-goal loss. They want to see the guys get revenge for them. And the guys have now been in the SCIAC championship game and have the bad taste of a three-goal loss, and they want to see the women get revenge for them.
"And it's been fun to see all that, because that is also part of the master plan, to have these two groups really just respect each other. ... And I think they do, finally."

Digging into the numbers from CLU's 16-7 win over Chapman:
Tough to score against: If you're thinking CLU has never played defense quite like it's playing right now, you're almost right.
Saturday's win over Chapman marked the third time this year that CLU has held an opponent to seven points. The Kingsmen have not had three such games in a season since moving to NCAA Division III in 1991. Nor, as a Division III program, have they had a five-game stretch in which they held opponents to 14 points or less, as is the case during their current five-game win streak.
To find comparable accomplishments, you have to go well back in the CLU record book. The last time CLU had three games allowing seven points or less in a single season was back in 1985, when a 6-5 campaign included a 28-7 win over Sonoma State, a 34-7 defeat of Western New Mexico, and a 24-3 defeat of St. Mary's. The last time the Kingsmen did it more than three times was in 1982, when the Kingsmen had three shutouts and a 21-7 win over Humboldt State. That team started the season 5-0, and allowed just 32 points in those wins to better the 48 points allowed in the current streak.
Still, since the first game in 1982 was a 34-16 win over Occidental, you have go go back another year to match, and better, the five straight games allowing 14 points or less.
The 1981 Kingsmen, who started 0-2, won their last eight games and never allowed more than 14 points in the process, giving up a total of just 65 points during the streak.
So CLU has played defense like this before. But it's been decades.
Tough to move against: The 139 yards allowed was not a CLU record -- the Kingsmen allowed just 26 yards to Caltech back on Oct. 30, 1965 -- but it is a fairly rare accomplishment. Football box scores are available on CLU's athletic website, clusports.com, back as far as the 2001 season, and Saturday's total equaled the low figure in the 69 games for which yardage stats are available. (The Kingsmen also allowed just 139 yards in beating Menlo 54-0 on Oct. 8, 2005).
Put another way, CLU has held opponents to less than 200 yards three times this season (Pacific Lutheran finished with 186 yards and Whittier had 192). In the previous seven seasons, CLU held opponents under 200 yards just five times, and never did it more than once in a season.
Tough to reach the end zone: Saturday's game was the second time this season CLU has won 16-7 -- the Kingsmen did it earlier against Pacific Lutheran -- but such low-scoring games have been a rarity during CLU's SCIAC era. In fact, since joining the SCIAC in 1992, CLU has only played in six lower scoring games: a 10-9 win over Azusa Pacific and a 14-3 defeat of Whittier in the first two games of the 1993 season; a 9-0 loss to Pomona-Pitzer in 1995, a 10-6 win over Chapman in 1996, a 6-0 overtime win over Occidental in 2002, and a 14-7 loss to Willamette last year.

Some odds and ends from CLU's 44-13 win over Pomona-Pitzer this afternoon:

A bit more from CLU's 44-13 win over Pomona-Pitzer in CLU's homecoming game at Mount Clef Stadium:

-- CLU's first six plays were a 22-yard pass from Jericho Toilolo to Jesse Matlock, a 10-yard run by Antoine Adams, a 46-yard pass from Toilolo to Matlock (for CLU's first touchdown), an 11-yard run by Danny Hernandez (who lined up at quarterback), a 13-yard run by Hernandez (who took a pitch and eluded at least three would-be tacklers behind the line of scrimmage) and a 13-yard run by Matlock. That's six plays, six first downs and 115 total yards. Not a bad start.
"It's hard to explain," said coach Ben McEnroe, "but there's definitely a feeling you get when you get on a roll offensively, and just feel like, from a play-calling perspective ... everything you call is going to work.
"There's a lot to be said about momentum. We have some big-play capabilities on the field, and Jericho does a good job managing it."
That early run was one of two occasions when Hernandez lined up at quarterback. He called those opportunities an "adrenaline rush." McEnroe said the Kingsmen would continue to showcase that look on occasion.
"He threw his first incompletion in practice this week," said the coach. "In that package we've got a couple of throws."
There was actually a pass called for Hernandez on Saturday, but he tucked the ball in and ran.
"He made a smart play," said McEnroe. "We would like to use that guy in a lot of different ways. He's a dual threat back there at quarterback, which is more than some of the schools that run these kinds of packages can say."
-- Toilolo had a very efficient day, completing 18 of 27 passes for 278 yards and running for another 26 yards.
"He seemed really comfortable today," said McEnroe. "Made some nice plays with his feet, made some nice plays with his arm and his head. He's just a smart guy. He managed a nice game."
It's hard to remember, given the impact Toilolo had last season before being sidelined by broken ribs and a punctured lung, that he still is relatively inexperienced as a collegiate quarterback. As McEnroe noted, this was just Toilolo's eighth collegiate start. The Kingsmen are 6-2 in those games.
-- CLU was flagged for 12 penalties, including two that gave Pomona-Pitzer first downs inside the 5-yard line on the Sagehens' first scoring drive. One of those, a celebration call after CLU broke up a pass into the end zone, left McEnroe more than a bit irked.
"I was a little disappointed with some of the penalties," he said. "Obviously, we don't have any control over that other than showing our kids on film and addressing it. Whether it was a good or bad call is irrelevant. We need to get some of those things straightened out, because in a closer game, it might come back to bite us."
-- CLU is now 12-7 all time against Pomona-Pitzer, 7-3 in SCIAC competition. Since the infamous (to CLU) 9-0 loss to the Sagehens in 1995 -- also known as The Game That Cost Joe Harper His Job -- the Kingsmen are 5-1 against Pomona.