Piaget and Lucchese head to finals
Jeff Blake. Photo by David Lominska.
After a very interesting day at Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club, the Bombardier Pacific Coast Open semifinals are over and the final, which will be the grand finale of the Centennial Season, is set. Defending champion Lucchese, led by John Muse, will face Melissa Ganzi’s Piaget team.
Lucchese did not have an easy path to the semifinals, as they had to get by a powerful ERG team that never quit attacking. The game started out a bit hesitant as both teams were testing each other out, but once it got going it was fast and furious polo. Lucchese would get up but a few goals only to see the ERG team claw its way back. Lucchese’s superstar player Adolfo Cambiaso lived up to his 10 goal rating with some spectacular runs to goal and an almost supernatural abilility to anticipate the play, but ERG’s Sebastian Merlos countered with the skills that earned him a 10 goal rating in England last spring to keep ERG in the game. Both had a lot of help from their teammates, as Lucchese spread the scoring evenly among the three pros and patron John Muse set up Adolfo for his runs with textbook blocking, and on the ERG side the steady defense of Paco de Narvaez turned into offense as he scored 6 goals, and Miguelito Torres added two more. Scott Wood played with great intensity, but it was not to be for ERG. A last second comeback fell just short as Lucchese’s Julio Gracida, with his team up by a single goal, won a key throw in with just 45 seconds left and carried the ball to goal. The shot went wide, but still gave Lucchese the 16-15 win as time expired.
Gonza Pieres. By David Lominska.
The second semifinal was a family affair, as Melissa and Marc Ganzi played against each other. The recently reconfigured Piaget team went on a tear and jumped out to a lead of 8-5 at halftime. Piaget won most of the lineups and when they could not win the lineups they played tough full court press defense on the Audi players until they got the loose ball. Gonzalito Pieres kept Audi in the game with 5 penalty conversions in the first half, but it was an uphill battle in the second half for Audi that just got steeper when Miguel Astrada and Jason Crowder kept hitting each other on the give and go. Final score was 15-10 in favor of Piaget, and Crowder led all scorers in the game with 8 goals and now will face his teammates from the previous year in the PCO final on Sunday.
