It’s been three years in the making, but in front of dozens of alumni Saturday, the Bruins finally matched a 48-year-old school record.
The No. 1 UCLA men’s water polo team (17-0) reached 50 straight wins with a 17-4 victory over Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in the second game of a triple-header Saturday, a mark that hasn’t been reached by the Bruins since coach Bob Horn’s team in 1968.
Victory Number 49 came with an 11-0 shutout of No. 13 UC Irvine, which marked the first time since 1979 that the Bruins shutout the Anteaters. That year, the Bruins shut them out twice, both times 1-0.
“That’s super special,” said senior attacker Joey Fuentes. “My brother went to UCI and he’s here today, so to shut those guys out in front of him, that’s always fun to do.”
Fuentes, along with redshirt freshman attacker Eric Goldenberg, had a team-high three goals in the second match.
“It’s one of those games where it’s kind of tough to focus,” Fuentes said. “We’re just trying to put ourselves in the mentality where we’re not playing our opponent, we’re just playing ourselves the whole time.”
In Saturday’s both games, the Bruins spread the scoring around. Nine different players amounted for the 11 goals against Irvine, and in the CMS victory, 12 amounted for the 17.
“We’re just trying to work on our depth and get everybody some reps in there,” said sophomore attacker David Stiling, who had three goals on the afternoon. “I think these kinds of games are where we really try to work on our depth and try to get everybody in there.”
With an offensive philosophy that revolves more around a “system” rather than individual performances, getting everybody that experience is important.
“Who’s doing the scoring doesn’t matter,” said sophomore defender Warren Snyder. “It’s the way we’re playing our offensive sets, and that’s just the result of the way we play. Everyone gets touches and whoever needs to step up will step up and hit the shots they need to.”
Snyder found himself in two of those situations early in the game against CMS – twice in the first four minutes of the first quarter he was up on his man. The rest of the offense had for the most part set up already, but with his man trailing behind him, he had the ball at the five-meter line and hit a bar-in right corner and netted another one in the upper left.
Coach Adam Wright mentioned in weeks past that he wants his team to play with more consistency, and although the Bruins weren’t challenged much on offense – or defense – in the games Saturday, Snyder thought that they made progress.
“Today’s games we did make an emphasis (on that),” Snyder said. “Before we talked about our communication and our consistency on the defensive end obviously, and I think that really showed today.”