The last time UCLA and Hawai’i squared off in women’s water polo, the Rainbow Wahine ended the Bruins’ 46-game winning streak with a thrilling 13-12 victory at the Stanford Invitational earlier this month.
Less than two weeks after that match, the two teams will meet again at Sunset Canyon Recreation Center, and the Bruins will have revenge on their minds.
“This is a team that we badly want to beat,” sophomore attacker Priscilla Orozco said. “I think playing at home will be an advantage for us and give us a lot of confidence, and that should help us play better with each other.”
When No. 4 UCLA (7-2, 1-0 MPSF) faced No. 3 Hawai’i (6-3, 0-2) in Palo Alto, the rankings were reversed and the Rainbow Wahine were looking for their first-ever victory over their Westwood rivals. In that match, UCLA held a 9-5 halftime lead before Hawai’i stormed back with advantages of 3-1 and 5-2 in the third and fourth quarters to win by one.
What stood out most to UCLA coach Adam Krikorian in the loss was the Bruins’ inability to maintain physical and mental consistency.
“The first time we played Hawai’i, we didn’t handle our end of quarter situations very well,” Krikorian said. “Overall we haven’t done a good job of managing the game, and we need to do that better, and that will help us finish quarters well.”
Krikorian will also look for considerable improvement on the defensive side of the pool, as Hawai’i was able to find too much offensive success against a UCLA game that places a high emphasis on shutting down their opponents’ attack.
“We understand that they have some girls that are big threats offensively,” Krikorian said. “But to give up 13 goals is way too much; it’s unacceptable. We need to be better defensively.”
Orozco shares the same sentiment as her coach, believing that the Bruins hold themselves to a higher defensive standard then what they showed the first time around.
“We really want to keep our goals against us down around four, for any team,” she said. “That’s how we’re going to win.”
To accomplish that, the Bruins will need to neutralize Hawai’i senior attacker Kelly Mason, who leads her team with 25 goals and tallied six in the teams’ first meeting.
Hawaii will be playing their first game since losing to USC, 11-3, in the final game of the Stanford Invitational. Meanwhile, the Bruins have bounced back from their losses suffered in Palo Alto with a pair of convincing wins last weekend over San Diego State and Loyola Marymount. Following the Hawai’i game, they will be faced with a quick turnaround before playing in the prestigious UC Irvine Invitational this weekend.
“I think it’s good that we’re playing Hawai’i right before our big Irvine tournament,” Orozco said. “If we can do well against them, we’ll have plenty of confidence going into the weekend.”
Orozco emphasizes that the team’s first meeting will be in the back of everyone’s mind, but that neither team can afford to dwell too much on the past.
“There’s lots of motivation for us,” she said. “We’ll come out with plenty of emotion, but we’re also going to have to keep composed, because we don’t want to let that added emotion of trying to beat them affect our play and what we’ve been working on.”
The two teams appear to be even in nearly every facet of the game, and Krikorian expects a similar close game like the one that occurred in the first meeting.
“Looking back at that game, I was surprised we were even up by five goals at one point,” he said. “Every time we play them from this point forward is going to be a tight game, a physical game, and I would expect nothing different on Thursday.”