After slipping in the rankings following a road loss to Arizona State last weekend, the UCLA women’s water polo team will host rival California Saturday in hopes of at least hanging on to its No. 4 ranking.
Saturday’s game has a must-win aura about it, as the Bruins and Bears are both looking to bounce back in Mountain Pacific Sports Federation play after dropping their respective conference openers.
On Sunday, the Bruins will finish off their weekend at the Spieker Aquatics Center with No. 7 San Diego State Aztecs, a team that, while talented, has earned less attention than the Golden Bears this week in practice. They were formerly members of the MPSF, but no more.
“It is a big game. Cal is our conference rival. I am looking forward to a chance to play a whole game as a team,” said coach Brandon Brooks. “It’s two tough games in a weekend. It’s better that we play Cal first because we need to put more focus into them because San Diego is not in our conference anymore.”
UCLA expects a hungry Cal squad on Saturday because the last time the two teams met at the Stanford Invitational, the Bruins were 7-4 victors.
“It’s definitely going to be a full four quarters, from the first whistle to the very last basically,” said sophomore attacker Emily Donohoe. “In this situation, … they are going to come out and want to beat us at our home, and we got to … do what we got to do to protect our house.”
Donohoe said Cal possesses a number of effective shooters and physical interior players, so it will be important for the Bruins to capitalize when the Bears cool off.
“They have a lot of offensive threats and so we have to be on our defensive game,” Donohoe said. “We have to convert our defensive stops to offensive goals.”
The game against San Diego State the next day hasn’t been pinned as an afterthought, but the Bruins aren’t complaining that the quick weekend turnaround ends with a non-conference opponent.
“I mean it’s Cal, and we always have this rivalry. … It’s a huge game but I am super pumped,“ said freshman center India Forster. “SDSU is really good, but Cal, we want to get it over with … (we) want to beat them and prove to them that we are better.”