In water polo, rankings mean everything. And this past Saturday
was a testament to that.
The No. 1 Bruins showed how large the gap between the top 4
teams and everyone else is with a 16-5 drubbing of No. 7 UC Santa
Barbara.
In what could only have been described as an easy victory, the
Bruins lit up the scoreboard with goals from nine different
players, including three each from seniors Albert Garcia and Brett
Ormsby.
“We shot the ball very well,” said coach Adam
Krikorian, whose team converted its 16 goals on 28 shots.
With the victory, the Bruins extended their winning streak to 14
games, the longest such streak for UCLA in eight years.
Krikorian said after the game that the team looked to be in
really good shape heading into the season’s final stretch,
and that this weekend’s game may have erased any doubts he
might have had.
The two teams traded goals for the first few minutes of the
game, but with the score was tied 2-2, the Bruins went on a
rampage, scoring five straight goals to take a 7-2 lead into the
half. The scoring fusillade began with senior Josh Hewko’s
back-to-back goals near the end of the first quarter. And with five
more goals in the third quarter, the Bruins effectively put the
game out of reach.
“We just had a lot of easy opportunities in front of the
goal,” Krikorian said. “I’m very pleased with how
we played.”
The Bruin defense, which has been the key ingredient in most of
the Bruins’ major victories this year, was dominant once
again, allowing goalie Joe Axelrad to only have to make seven
saves.
“Joe was his usual self and did a good job,”
Krikorian said. “There just wasn’t a whole lot for him
to do. We did a really nice job on perimeter defense and that made
it easier on him.”
The Bruins never trailed in the game and avoided any possibility
of an upset with dominant play on both ends of the pool. With hat
tricks from both Garcia and Ormsby, and two goals apiece from
Hewko, senior Ted Peck, and seldom-used sophomore James Palmer,
UCLA comfortably rolled to a blowout victory.
The Bruins, who now hold a 6-0 record in Mountain Pacific Sports
Federation play, have two regular season games left against
dangerous teams in USC and UC Irvine. In the three combined games
against those two schools this year, UCLA has outscored them by a
total of only five goals.
But the rankings indicate UCLA is the better team. And recently,
those rankings have meant everything.