The No. 1 UCLA women’s water polo team stays close to home this weekend as it takes on nearby No. 12 Loyola Marymount on Saturday afternoon.
After finishing last weekend with a 4-0 record in Michigan, the Bruins hope to continue their undefeated start to the season with a win over the Lions. The team also hopes that the Lions provide more of a challenge than the competition at the Michigan Invitational.
“I think it will be a pretty good game,” coach Adam Krikorian said. “There’s just a lot of unknown when it’s the first time seeing a team, but it’s just going to be another chance to play a good team and get a good game under our belt.”
The last time the two teams met, during the 2007 season, the Bruins toppled the Lions 17-3. However, Loyola Marymount was the 2007 Western Water Polo Association champions and appeared in the NCAA tournament last year. The Lions were eliminated before having the opportunity to face UCLA.
“I think they are just a solid team, a really good team all around,” Krikorian said. “They don’t have a lot of weak links. There is a lot that we don’t know about them and we will figure out within the first few minutes of the game starting.”
The biggest obstacle the team will face in the next few days will be the health of the players, as an illness has spread throughout the team.
“The biggest concern now is actually just getting healthy,” Krikorian said. “It seems like 90 percent of our team is deathly ill right now, battling some kind of flu. It’s been hard. We haven’t been able to do some things that I’ve wanted to do this week because of that. So we’re just hoping we can get healthy before Saturday comes around.”
Junior Katie Rulon said she agreed.
“We’re just trying to get through (the illnesses),” Rulon said. “We haven’t gone up and down in practice as much this week, but hopefully in the next couple of days everyone gets better and we can really practice.”
Rulon scored a team-high 12 goals throughout four games this past weekend at the Michigan Invitational, earning the honor of being named the MPSF co-player of the week this past Monday.
Despite battling illness, the Bruins have been preparing their defense to take on the Lions.
“We’ve been working a lot on our defense and our 6-on-5 (offense) to really get ready for this weekend,” freshman Priscilla Orozco said.