UCLA men’s water polo, for the entirety of its 57-game win streak and against USC last weekend, had never trailed after three quarters.
It trailed No. 3 California by two entering the fourth quarter Friday night.
This was unfamiliar territory, and for a team that prides itself on dealing with adversity, it was the opportune test. Consider it passed.
The No. 2 Bruins (25-1, 3-1 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) outscored the Bears 5-3 in the fourth quarter, and 2-1 in overtime to complete an 11-10 comeback victory and book their ticket to the conference championship game Sunday afternoon.
“It shows a lot that we were able to go down in the first half and bounce back and stick to our game plan,” said redshirt senior goalkeeper Garrett Danner. “I think it was a great result for us, but if we play our game it can be even better.”
It wasn’t even until the fourth quarter that they started to play their game, according to coach Adam Wright.
“It was a tale of two halves,” Wright said. “And really, we didn’t play until the fourth quarter. We have to do a better job, otherwise we’re going to find ourselves in this situation too much.”
By then, they were in a 6-4 hole, the plurality of the goals coming off out-of-character one-on-nobody defensive lapses and 6-on-5 opportunities for the Bears.
But by halfway through the fourth quarter, it was a new game. Junior center Matt Farmer scored UCLA’s first goal out of center and junior utility Alex Roelse converted on a power play from the left wing to tie the game at six apiece.
The following possession, Cal went back up by one, and the rest of the game was a pendulum swing. Senior attacker Patrick Fellner scored two goals, but each time Cal answered right back on the next possession to go back up a point.
In the first game between these two teams this year at the Mountain Pacific Invitational, the Bears’ leading scorer, Johnny Hooper, was rolled from the game before the first quarter ended, and in potentially their last meeting of the year, the Bears almost had the favor returned.
Fellner, UCLA’s leading scorer with 37 goals, had two exclusions halfway through the third. One more and the resurgent UCLA fourth quarter could have been nonexistent.
“I was playing bad positional defense, which led to them posting up and then me getting excluded,” Fellner said. “Increasing my one-on-one drive defense resulted in me not getting posted up.”
And after senior center Gordon Marshall tied the game once again at nine all with just over a minute to go, Fellner would strike again in overtime before he got called for his third exclusion. He finished the game with four goals, a team high on the night.
But it was Danner that ensured that overtime opportunity in the first place. With less than twenty seconds to go, Cal’s Connor Neumann was streaking down the right side of the pool, with just the 2015 Peter J. Cutino Award winner between him and a victory for the Bears.
“They had a chance on a counterattack to go and win the game,” Wright said. “But this is Garrett – we’ve seen it before and we’re going to need to see it again if I had to guess.”
Danner threw both hands to the left side of the cage and sent the shot reeling back to half tank.
“It’s a tendency for a lot of lefties to shoot near side low on their counterattacks,” Danner said. “I thought that was the best opportunity I had, to just get up big and wait for him to release, and I was able to read it to nearside, so I went two hands nearside and was able to get my elbow on it.”
In overtime, UCLA’s career saves record held Cal to one goal. Roelse scored the decisive goal in the second period to put the Bruins up 11-10, and Danner and the defense shut the Bears out for the final two minutes – including a 6-on-4 chance with seconds left – to seal the game.
He’s a luxury the team has to stop taking advantage of, according to Wright, and with a rematch set against No.1 USC set on Sunday, there are things UCLA has to do to not rely as heavily on him.
“We didn’t have great energy at the beginning, I don’t know if it was nerves or what is was,” Wright said. “We can put ourselves in a better position early on, we gave up three counter goals, two of them being one on nobodies I think we gave up two or three center goals, these are things that we don’t do.”
The last time UCLA gave up 10 or more goals to a top-four team was against Cal last year at the MPSF conference tournament – the end result, a one-goal double-overtime victory.