Coming to haunt the No. 2 UCLA men’s water polo team this
Halloween weekend is the spooky specter of anteaters.
But seriously, UCLA (9-6, 1-3 in the Mountain Pacific Sports
Federation) cannot take No. 5 UC Irvine (11-6, 2-2 MPSF) lightly
because another MPSF loss could make the Bruins’ status
scary.
After back-to-back excruciating two-goal losses to No. 1
Stanford, the Bruins must regroup and focus on Saturday because
their match with UC Irvine may be the most meaningful game of their
season.
“This game is too important,” head coach Adam
Krikorian said. “It’s an MPSF game and any more of
those losses might force us to win the conference tournament to go
to the NCAA’s.”
That route is as favorable to the team as a trip to
Transylvania, but to avoid it, the Bruins better be ready for a
battle. UCLA has already split two very physical matches this year
against the Anteaters, but actually trails in the all-time series
49-57-1.
“With UC Irvine what you see is what you get,” Coach
Krikorian said. “Their strengths are their size and speed.
They are defensively aggressive in denying the ball and with their
press. They play extremely physical in order to try to take you out
of your game. Their weakness, though, is their depth. They
can’t go as deep as us so we need to make it a game of
conditioning.”
The Anteaters feature two of the best center forwards in the
country ““ senior Jeff Powers and sophomore Dreason Berry. The
two are the MPSF’s third and fourth leading scorers. Hence,
it will be another tiring week for Bruin junior driver Albert
Garcia who admirably dealt with Stanford top scorer Tony Azevedo
the past two weeks, shutting him out in the first match between the
schools.
“The games against Irvine are usually similar,” said
sophomore driver Brett Ormsby, the reigning MPSF Player of the
Week. “They have a couple of strong scorers so we need to
deny the ball there. We also need to counterattack because
we’re a better swimming team.”
Though the regular season is coming to an end, Coach Krikorian
still believes his squad has yet to perform up to its capabilities.
To elevate their play, he has been focusing on the team’s
power play offense.
“In practice we have been emphasizing our six-on-five
because our conversion percentage with a man advantage is only 36
percent, and we’d like to be around 50 percent.”
If the Bruins can improve their power play and finally hit their
elusive peak offensively, they will be in good position to vanquish
the anteaters.