For the UCLA men’s water polo team, the third time wasn’t the charm.
The fourth-ranked Bruins entered Saturday’s game at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center against the third-ranked California Golden Bears looking to reverse recent history. The Bears had beaten the Bruins twice this season already, once as recently as last weekend. The two games had been decided by a total of three points, and with a large, pre-football-game crowd behind them, the Bruins were hoping to finally break through against the defending national champions.
But for the third time, the UCLA came up just short, losing 8-7. And for the second week in a row, Cal scored the winning goal with less than a minute left in the game. While UCLA would rebound on Sunday by soundly defeating the thirteenth-ranked Pacific Tigers, 16-6, the Bruins remained frustrated and disappointed by their habit of stumbling against Cal.
“It’s the same story for us,” coach Adam Krikorian said. “It came close, but we weren’t good enough. In the end, we couldn’t stop their individual players.”
On Saturday, the most dangerous of those players was senior Michael Sharf, who scored a game-high three goals for the Bears. Sharf’s third goal snapped a 7-7 tie with 21 seconds left in the game, when Cal came out of a timeout and worked the ball to him down low on the right side of Bruins’ goal. Not only did that goal win the game for Cal, it was symptomatic of UCLA’s more general struggle to win individual defensive matchups against Cal’s best players.
“It’s frustrating,” Krikorian said. “We have to find some players who are going to get it done in the fourth quarter. … All we had to do in the end was play good defense. The thing is, they didn’t go anything special, they didn’t run anything special. It was just an individual move, just a one-on-one (play).
“A lot of it comes down to just digging a little deeper. We’ve got to be able to do that and (so far) we haven’t been able to do that. That’s a big concern.”
Back in the familiar confines of the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center pool on Sunday, the Bruins didn’t need to dig quite so deep to rout the overmatched Tigers. While Pacific had played UCLA fairly close at the SoCal Tournament a week ago before finally losing 15-10, the Bruins jumped out to a 4-1 first quarter lead and never gave the Tigers a chance to make the game close.
Ten different players scored for UCLA, led by redshirt sophomore Scott Davidson and redshirt junior Kyle Healy, who scored three goals each, and redshirt junior Krsto Sbutega and redshirt senior Cameron Smith, who scored two a piece.
“It doesn’t matter who we play; we always strive for perfection,” Smith said. “We don’t even think about the quality of the team we’re facing. We just want to worry about our team and just do the best we can. … Each team we play, we’re going to give 100 percent.”
The win against Pacific improved the Bruins’ record to 15-5 overall and 2-2 in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play. In addition to the three losses to Cal, UCLA has also recorded losses against No. 1 USC and No. 2 Stanford, each by one goal. Those losses mean that UCLA will likely have to win the MPSF Conference Tournament in order qualify for the NCAA Tournament.
While the close margins of all of those losses demonstrates that the Bruins have been competitive with the best teams in the country, they’ll need to find a way to turn those tough losses into victories if they want to have a chance to play for the national title.
“It’s always (painful) being on the losing end of one-goal games, and it hurts when it’s that close to reach and you just don’t quite get there,” Smith said. “It’s a battle every time we play Cal. Any of the top four teams we play, it’s a battle every time. Pretty much every one of those games can be a one-goal game, so it’s just going to come down to execution. (We need) to just try and find that one goal.”