The UCLA women’s water polo team defeated No. 15 Long Beach State 13-4 Thursday night in a tune up before a weekend in which the team faces its biggest challenges of the season so far.
The No. 3 Bruins (4-0) quickly took the game to the 49ers (0-1), opening on a 6-0 run before closing off a rare night match in Long Beach.
“I think it was a fairly good game,” UCLA coach Adam Krikorian said. “(But) we need to learn to play better when we are tired ““ when we are fresh we are defensively sharp, but then we start to unwind.”
“At the same time, we accomplished what we set out to do. Tanya Gandy shot well, goalie Brittany Fullen did a good job, and our 2-meter defenders were also very good.”
Senior attacker Gandy, who earned the MPSF Co-Player of the Week award for her 9 goals in 3 games in the previous weekend’s Michigan Invitational, led the Bruins by scoring a team-high 4 goals in Long Beach State’s season opener. Gandy felt the team’s shutdown defense was a major factor in overcoming the 49ers yet still sees room for improvement on the other end of the pool.
“Long Beach came out very aggressive, which worked out well for us because our main goal was to play good defense,” Gandy said. “The key parts were our 5-on-6 attack, though we need to work on executing in front of the goal. But we came out strong and in the end all the girls contributed well.”
In addition to Gandy, sophomore Priscilla Orozco added three goals and senior Anne Belden had two. Senior Katie Rulon, sophomore Megan Burmeister, and freshmen Randi Bresee and KK Clark each had one goal each.
Krikorian believes the game was important for getting the team more experience playing together.
“It is another game under our belt,” he said.” There are a lot of girls playing with nerves, so the more we can play and get used to each other, the better off we are going to be as a team.”
Thursday’s win comes two days before the Bruins will play some familiar, big-name opponents in this weekend’s Stanford Invitational.
On Saturday, the team will head to Palo Alto to play conference foes No. 7 San Jose State and No. 4 Hawai’i, before facing off against the U.S. National Team and a yet-to-be-determined opponent on Sunday.
“This weekend is definitely our first major test,” Gandy said. “San Jose State and Hawai’i are two extremely tough games, and we are not even looking to Sunday when we could play Stanford or USC in addition to the Junior National Team. It will be a great opportunity to see where we are at this point in the season.”
UCLA beat Hawai’i 15-10 and San Jose State 12-7 in last year’s invitational.
“The Long Beach win is a nice start for a long weekend ahead,” Gandy said. “There will be good tests and it will be fun to play some tough competition.”