As the season comes to a close for the 2005 UCLA men’s
club water polo team, the Bruins have an opportunity to steal away
some of the spotlight from more prominent teams on campus by
winning a national title. The Bruins will travel to Massachusetts
to participate in the National Collegiate Championship Tournament,
which begins today at the Muir-Samuelson Pool at Williams College
in Williamstown. They must beat the host school and 14 other
division champions in order to claim the title. Last week, the No.
3 Bruins earned their spot in the tournament and their first
Pacific Coast Division title by defeating the two-time defending
champion Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Mustangs 10-9 in double overtime.
The magnitude of their surprising win is not lost on the Bruins, as
they know how far they’ve traveled just to have a chance to
call themselves champions. “It was Cal Poly’s first
defeat in league play. Since the division was formed in 1998,
they’ve won all six division championships and had never lost
a league game,” coach Sam Bakhshandehpour said. By virtue of
Cal Poly’s domination of club water polo, the Bruins
inherited the top seed for the tournament, meaning they get to play
the 16th seed in the first round. But the Bruins’ victory
over Cal Poly doesn’t necessarily make the championship
tournament any easier. The 16th seed is host school Williams
College, which narrowly lost the New England Championship to Yale.
Williams is currently ranked 12th on the Men’s Collegiate
Club Top 20 Poll. The Bruins also get the honor of playing the
first game in the tournament at 9 a.m. EST after a red-eye flight
from Los Angeles. It doesn’t get any easier for the Bruins
after that. If they defeat Williams, they then face the winner of
the No. 13 Georgetown ““ No. 14 Oregon match in the
quarterfinals. Winning that match would place the Bruins in the
semifinals, where they might face powerhouses like first-ranked
Arizona, No. 2 Grand Valley State (MI), No. 3 Michigan State and
No. 6 Yale. Michigan State and UCLA are tied at third; Cal Poly is
ranked fifth. Fortunately, the Bruins are no strangers to playing
top-ranked teams and close games. Over the course of the season,
they were a perfect 6-0 in one-goal games. To win their division
last weekend, they had to overcome No. 19 UC San Diego in the
semifinals, No. 16 UC Davis in the quarterfinals and, of course,
the former national champions. The quarterfinal and final matches
also went into overtime. Bakhshandehpour feels that the team is
well-prepared and confident that the team’s recent successes
won’t affect its play, for better or for worse.
“They’re a great group of guys with a lot of
heart,” Bakhshandehpour said. The Bruins’ playing and
training philosophy has helped them get to this stage in their
season. According to team captain Brian Singleton, the Bruins have
been methodical and relatively near-sighted all season.
“We’re going into this tournament really focused.
We’re going to take it one game at a time.” Fellow
captain Trent Huntington was more enthusiastic: “We’re
confident going in there. We’ve beaten difficult teams and
we’re ready for (the tournament).” If there was any
year for the Bruins’ breakout, this was the year. They
returned five starters and eight seniors, and added a capable
freshman class, which Singleton feels was instrumental to the
team’s success. “We’re a young team, but (the
freshmen) incorporated well and were brought up to speed. We all
work well together,” Singleton said. After the championship
tournament ends, the club team will take the winter off. When
spring begins, they will suit up and begin their run at a second
Pacific Coast Division title and, hopefully, a second National
Championship.