NEW YORK, NY December 03, 2005 —See if you can guess which local water polo team squares off today against the University of Southern California in the NCAA Final Four. Here’s a hint: It's the "Terriers" who will be tackling the mighty "Trojans." Not much help, is it? WNYC's Fred Mogul reports on one little-known college’s powerful water polo program.

REPORTER: The USC water polo team generally practices and competes in an Olympic-size pool in the open California air. But this is not southern California. This is a 25-yard-by-40-foot pool in the basement of St. Francis College. The school has 24-hundred students, most of them commuters and many of them the first in their family to go to college. The pool here in Brooklyn Heights is so small, that during water polo season, it is filled almost to overflowing, so that players are forced to swim in the shallow end, rather than stand. But even with modest facilities and without widespread prestige, St. Francis has become a magnet for water polo players from around the world. Carl Quigley has coached the team since graduating here 30 years ago.

QUIGLEY: Kids go home over the summer, and their friends ask them, ‘What’s happening? How’s everything? How’s New York? And if they feel like they have some potential here, 1, to be successful in the classroom and also to be successful in the pool, then it translates into the kid asking the next question: Well, how do I get that? What do I have to do to get to St. Francis or any college in the U.S.

REPORTER: The 14 players live in four of the five boroughs - and come from 10 different countries, including Serbia, Venezuela, Hungary, Israel, Canada...and Texas. During the last home practice this week, you could hear different clusters of players speaking in their native tongues -- sort of what it might sound like if the Tower of Babel had a swimming pool. Freshman Nemanja Pucarevic from Serbia says it’s taken a little getting used to.

PUCAVERIC: It’s very interesting when you came on the practice and there are four or five different languages, speaking, but we all speak English fluently, and that’s the reason we can all talk with each other.

REPORTER: The players get a kick out of their own global diversity, and their eyes light up when they talk about visiting each other’s home countries. Coach Quigley says there have been a few tensions over the years, but they have been rare. Still, he always asks Croat recruits if they’re willing to play with Serbs, and vice-versa. Years ago, a Lebanese Christian dropped off the team rather than play with a Syrian Muslim – who didn’t exactly get along with the Israeli Jew…

QUIGLEY: Bus rides and van rides were political. You know, their voices would raise, [and they would] have issues. They were never gonna get along outside the pool, but they could put their differences away while they were wet.

REPORTER: Many overseas players say they’ve had to adjust a little bit to American-style water polo. Pucarevic says the sport is a lot more aggressive in Europe.

Pucarevic: You just can do anything under the water, and the referee cannot see also that, and they will not punish you for that. You can kick somebody in head or ribs or anywhere, and they will not punish you. It’s a very rough sport.

REPORTER: The team has reached the national semi-finals for the first time, but has consistently been one of the top water polo teams academically, ranking fourth last year, with a combined GPA of 3.29. Most of the players say the sport brought them here, but their focus is on their education and career. Israeli Junior Mori Stern is the team captain and a major in communications and philosophy.

STERN: Water polo is a great passion, but there are other things I want to accomplish in my life You have to be mature enough and know when to put it aside and focus on the real things in life

REPORTER: No non-Californian team has ever made it into the finals, much less won the championship. But the Terriers figure they have a few things USC and the other two semi-finalists from the Golden State don't. Their Brooklyn fan base will pack the pool at the tournament – just a few hours away at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. And the Californians are used to playing outside, where they strategically use the sun to blind the goalie and defenders, and where crowd noise doesn’t reverberate into a deafening roar. Meanwhile, the United Nations-like swimmers from St. Francis College will have their usual advantage: when frustrated, they can curse in any number of different languages with little risk of penalty.