BERKELEY – Strong defense set the tone on one end of the pool and six goals from Luca Cupido helped establish a presence at the other as the No. 3-ranked Cal men's water polo team stayed perfect at home in 2017 with an 18-8 victory over No. 6 UC Irvine at Spieker Aquatics Complex.

With members of Cal's 1977 national championship team in attendance to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of their triumph, the current crop of Golden Bears entered Saturday's contest intent on carrying that tradition forward with another good performance. That effort started immediately against the Anteaters as Cal's two senior captains, Cupido and Pedro Stellet, combined to score all four goals in the first period and give the Bears (14-1) a 4-2 lead after eight minutes.

While the goals kept coming, Cal's defense continued to make life difficult on a UC Irvine team that owns a win over UCLA this season. When he wasn't making his presence felt on offense, Cupido was busy leading the team in steals at the other end, finishing the match with four to push his season total to 34.

Cal finished with 11 steals as a team, and when the Bears weren't taking the ball away from the Anteaters, Kevin Le Vine made scoring even more difficult with yet another quality performance in the cage. The senior from El Cajon, Calif. stopped a career-high 19 shots, the most by any goalkeeper in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation this season.

The Bears didn't lack for offense, either, as they took an 8-4 lead at halftime and extended the advantage to 14-6 by the end of three periods. Four more goals in the fourth wrapped up the scoring and Cal's starters got to take a seat with just over five minutes left to play.

"Six, seven weeks into the season, I think we're starting to learn our qualities on the defensive side," Cupido said. "It's probably not going to be the shot blocking, but I think we can put pressure on their best shooters and threaten them with our counter-attack, which will force quick shots. At the end of the day, defense is effort and I think if we put in the effort, we can compete against anyone. In any sport, there's no winning without defense. As I always say, we have a lot of potential on the offensive side but defense is going to be crucial at NCAAs, which NCAAs last year demonstrated."

Cupido's all-around stats demonstrated his versatility as the senior finished with six goals, four steals, three assists, one field block and one ejection earned. Johnny Hooper also continued to show his all-around prowess as the MPSF's leader in goals per match scored two goals and assisted on five more. Stellet, Nicholas Carniglia and Odysseas Masmanidis each added two goals while Spencer Farrar, Safak Simsek, Chase Hamming and Conor Neumann all finished with one apiece.

Cal returns to the pool on Sunday as the Bears host No. 16 San Jose State at 1 p.m. Live updates from the match can be found by following Cal Water Polo (@CalWaterPolo) on Twitter.