SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – The Santa Clara women's water polo was unable to generate enough offense and Sam Murphy scored three times to lead four players with multiple goals for No. 13 UC Santa Barbara, which won 13-3 Sunday afternoon.
Lauren Martin, Taylor Shore and Miranda Schroder each scored twice for the Gauchos (12-9) who have five of their last six games.
"They are a good team," head coach Keith Wilbur said. "We were able to keep it close for a half, but we had a hard time scoring."
Elizabeth Anderson scored twice and Lauren Paxton added one for the Broncos (6-10) who had all of their goals on nine attempts with the man advantage.
The Gauchos went 3-for-7 on the power play and scored on one of two penalty shot attempts.
Francesca Puccinelli went the distance in net for Santa Clara, recording nine saves.
Anderson's first goal cut the deficit to 3-1 with less than 1 minute to go before halftime, but the Gauchos scored the next eight. Shore's first goal made it 11-1 with 6:19 remaining in the third period.
"We were able to keep it close for a half, but it unraveled a bit in the second half," Wilbur said.
Santa Clara won twice last weekend at home, but despite a strong performance from Anderson (two goals, two drawn ejections and two drawn penalty shots) on Saturday the Broncos fell to No. 19 Harvard, 7-5, at UC Santa Barbara.
The Broncos play next on Thursday (3 p.m.), traveling to Sonoma State for the their final nonconference game of the season.
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