It’s probably safe to say the UCLA men’s water polo team won’t be the third-ranked team in the country anymore.
The bad news is the Bruins are headed the wrong way.
After spending the better part of the last two seasons looking up in the rankings at No. 1 USC and No. 2 California, UCLA came up short in its Mountain Pacific Sports Federation conference opener this weekend, losing on the road to No. 4 Stanford 7-6 on Saturday. The loss will likely drop the Bruins behind the Cardinal in this week’s coaches’ poll.
While the Bruins rebounded nicely with two easy non-conference wins on Sunday, 16-5 over Santa Clara and 20-3 over UC Santa Cruz, the main thing they’ll bring home with them from Northern California is the sting of the Stanford loss.
“We feel like we let that one slip away,” redshirt junior attacker Krsto Sbutega said. “We did a pretty decent job, but we couldn’t put away our opportunities. Credit them. It puts us in a position where we really can’t mess up again (in conference games).”
A big part of Saturday’s loss can be blamed on a disastrous third quarter. While the Bruins had built a 5-4 lead at halftime, the Cardinal scored three unanswered goals in the third, the last on a 5-meter penalty shot, dropping the Bruins into a 7-5 hole from which they couldn’t recover. The Bruins struggled offensively throughout the game, failing to convert a penalty shot of their own and coming up empty on all six of their six-on-five advantages. Coach Adam Krikorian pointed to the Bruins’ failures in offensive execution as the main reasons for the loss.
“One of the differences was the way (Stanford) executed in the second half,” he said. “We couldn’t take advantage of our man-up opportunities, or even just opportunities in our half-court offense.”
After allowing seven goals to UC Irvine center Tim Hutten last weekend, including five from the two-meter position, the Bruins had a few defensive questions heading into the Stanford game. While Krikorian was fairly pleased with his team’s interior defense against the Cardinal, Stanford’s Sage Wright had a big day, scoring four of Stanford’s goals.
“(Wright) mostly seemed to be in the right place at the right time,” Krikorian said. “I was actually pretty happy that we didn’t give up any goals to their top two centers. We didn’t let their best players beat us. It was more a case of their second-tier guys stepping up.”
After a tough day Saturday, the Bruins got a chance to relax a little bit against weaker competition on Sunday. Even with the Stanford loss still fresh in their minds, the Bruins scored early and often against both the Broncos and the Banana Slugs, taking out some of their frustrations on their outclassed opponents.
“It was kind of hard to concentrate on (Sunday’s) games after focusing all week on Stanford,” Sbutega said. “We were playing more freely. It’s kind of wrong, but I was still thinking a little bit about Stanford.”
For now the Bruins will need to get over the loss, and any accompanying drop in their ranking, as quickly as they can. This Friday the Bruins will face a tough re-match of last week’s 12-11 overtime non-conference win over UCI. The difference is that this game will be played at Irvine’s Anteater Pool instead of at UCLA, and will count on the conference standings. Now 0-1 in the MPSF, the Bruins can’t afford another loss.
“You (have to) move on,” Krikorian said of his team’s mind-set. “Every game’s going to be tough. You can’t stay down too long or up too high. There are too many good opponents in this league on a week-to-week basis.”