The home stretch is now beginning for the UCLA men’s water
polo team.
Unlike last year’s team, this year’s Bruins have
serious ground to make up and work to do in their last nine
games.
Last year’s team had a dominating 18-game winning streak
that started prior to the NorCal tournament and extended until the
Mountain Pacific Sports Federation championship game. With their
fourth-place finish in the NorCal tournament, this year’s
team will have to go on a similar run to establish any kind of
dominance heading into the postseason.
“We’ve got four losses under our belt,” coach
Adam Krikorian said. “Last year we were in the driver’s
seat, but this year it’s USC in the driver’s seat.
We’re looking up at them, and we have to find our way back to
the top.”
Something that may help the Bruins is the lighter schedule
heading into the back end of the season. Early on in the season,
the team had at least two games most weeks. With tournaments, there
were multiple games in a single weekend. After last weekend’s
NorCal tournament, the Bruins welcome a schedule in which they have
no more than 2 games per week.
“It’s a little easier to prepare for,”
Krikorian said. “Not playing four games in one weekend is
much easier, both mentally and physically. It’s similar to a
football team now. Week by week, we prepare for new teams, and we
start fresh on Monday.”
The quality of opponents over the last nine games should be to
the Bruins’ advantage. With only two of their games against
top-four opponents USC and Stanford, the Bruins have a conceivable
chance of winning the rest of the games. With four combined losses
to Cal and Stanford, it remains to be seen how consistently this
team can play against worthy competition.
“It’s just a disturbing trend how we’re losing
these games,” Krikorian said. “We’re going into
the second half of games with leads and losing.”
The Bruins are not looking ahead further than the weekend and
are hoping that they can solve their second-half issues by the time
the postseason rolls around.
“This week we just have to prepare for UC San Diego and UC
Santa Barbara,” Krikorian said. “And then we’ll
prepare for next week’s games next week.”
The Bruins remain relatively healthy, despite the heavy workload
of this past weekend.
“We had Zider’s broken ear drum,” Krikorian
said. “And the fatigue that comes with playing four games in
one weekend. But we’re fine.”