This is when the season becomes serious for the third-ranked Cal men’s water polo team.

The Bears play a consequential weekend home set against No. 1 UCLA on Saturday and No. 4 USC on Sunday. Both games begin at 1 p.m. at Spieker Aquatics Center and will be streamed on Overnght.

It’s the start of a three-week buildup leading to the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament, where the final jockeying takes place for spots in the NCAA championships, Dec. 3-6 at La Jolla.

At stake in the coming weeks are the three bids the MPSF is allotted for the NCAAs. Since 1998, the NCAAs have been the sole possession of Cal, Stanford, UCLA and USC. No one else in the country has won a national title during that span.

But only three of those four teams will be given berths in the NCAA bracket. One of them will stay home.

It used to be even tougher, with only two of the four earning spots in the NCAA field. Now it’s three, and Cal coach Kirk Everist — one victory shy of 500 for his career — doesn’t expect the tournament to expand anytime soon.

Cal is 12-4 with two losses each to UCLA (17-1) and USC (14-3). The Bears beat Stanford (24-2) by a 12-8 margin in their only meeting, so far. But each of the four are prepping for a stretch run against their elite rivals.

“A lot of weird things happen in the last part of our seasons because we just keep playing each other,” said Everist, whose Bears climbed a spot this week to No. 3 in the national rankings. 

“At the end of the day, we have a conference tournament and, just like basketball, if you win the conference tournament you get in,” he said. “We’re in a situation where if you want to win a national championship, you’ve got to win five games in a row.”

The math there involves two wins in the conference tournament and three at the nationals. Besides the automatic qualifier into the NCAAs from the conference tournament, two other teams will land at-large bids.

In the meantime, the Bears face the Bruins and Trojans this weekend, hoping to turn the tables after holding a lead in the fourth quarter of three of the first four meetings.

Especially painful, no doubt, was a 13-12 loss to USC on Sept. 20 at the MPSF Invitational at Stanford, where the Bears were up 12-9 before the Trojans scored four straight goals in the final 6:24.

Cal stays at home on Friday, Nov. 6 when it faces No. 6 Fordham (22-1), then closes the regular season on Friday, Nov. 13 at Stanford.

The Bears have claimed an unprecedented 17 NCAA water polo titles, including six under Everist. They won three in a row through 2023 before failing to make the NCAA field the past two seasons.

UCLA owns 14 national titles, Stanford 11 and USC 10.

The Bears head into this weekend riding a three-game win streak and Everist is encouraged by their level of play.

“They’ve worked really hard for the last year,” he said. “There’s a good temperament and there’s good quality out there.”

The Bears rely on a physical defense and the offensive playmaking of Beso Akhhvlediana, a sophomore attacker from Tbilisi, Georgia.

Everist was convinced this team had the makeup to be a strong defensive club. “We’re playing hard, we’re playing tough, we’re a pain in the ass team to play, I think,” he said. “That was kind of a goal — making sure people feel us in a game. We put pressure on them constantly and what does that offer us on the offensive end?”

Often the ball winds up in the hands of Akhhvlediana, who earned second-team All-America honors as a freshman last year when he racked up 59 goals and 23 assists. That made him the first Cal freshman to secure a spot on the All-MPSF first team since Cal great Nikolaos Papanikolaou in 2019.

Akhhvlediana has progressed as a sophomore, and leads the Bears with 45 goals and 32 assists. His 4.81 points per game (goals plus assists) is second-most in the conference.

He has been a factor against the other three California powerhouse programs, totaling 15 goals and nine assists in those five games. 

“Amazing scorer,” Everist says in the video at the top of this story. “He’s got the ability to put the ball in the back of the net. He’s an attacker in every sense of the word.”