With the way the undefeated UCLA women’s water polo team has been brushing aside the competition all season, many of its games have actually appeared more like formalities than face-offs.
Now, after finally reaching the tournament that could give the Bruins their fourth straight national championship, it looks like they will have to go through that seemingly ceremonial routine one more time.
The No. 1 Bruins (30-0) will meet their NCAA Championship first-round foe Pomona-Pitzer (17-11) today at 5 p.m. at Stanford’s Avery Aquatic Center. The eighth-seeded Sagehens are the lone Division III team in the tournament and appear to need quite a miracle to pull off the upset. The two teams played each other last year in the same round, and it would have been hard for UCLA to have been more dominant in that game; the Bruins won 22-0.
Pomona-Pitzer earned the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s automatic bid to Palo Alto last weekend with an 8-7 win over Cal Lutheran in its conference’s tournament final. Despite going 8-1 in their conference regular season, the Sagehens were 0-2 against teams in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, the conference that has brought UCLA and three other at-large teams to the NCAA title table.
While this game could possibly be the most lopsided of UCLA’s entire schedule, the Bruins are sticking to the same stone-faced attitude that has yet to fail them.
“It’s going to be important to play hard in every game once you get into this tournament,” junior Tanya Gandy said. “I don’t know if (Pomona-Pitzer) will be as hard a game as ‘SC, but our intensity still has to be up. We still have to play well.”
This game marks another milestone, as it will be the first NCAA Tournament game for the team’s 11 freshmen.
“I think they will be really excited to be there,” coach Adam Krikorian said of his first-years. “They have played just awesome the last two weeks in practice. It’s amazing to watch. I think they’re ready to go.”
If the Bruins’ first game goes as expected, many of the younger players could see playing time against an overmatched opponent, but it might be their last chance given the competition that awaits UCLA in the later rounds. With an entire year of undefeated water polo under their belts, the new generation of Bruins have shown off plenty of experience for players their age.
“Deep inside I’m nervous, but really, I’m more confident than nervous because we’ve prepared a lot for this tournament,” freshman Priscilla Orozco said.
Although Pomona-Pitzer’s chances for victory are considered by many to be negligible, the Bruins have no qualms about an extra game in the pool.
“They’re probably just excited to be in this game and to get that opportunity to play the No. 1 seed,” said Krikorian of Pomona’s inclusion in the most prestigious weekend of collegiate women’s water polo.
There is some debate in the sport about the current NCAA format, which often sends a Division III school like Pomona-Pitzer to play in the same final tournament as perennial powerhouses like UCLA, Stanford and USC.
By comparison, Hawai’i ““ which grabbed a fourth-place finish at the MPSF tournament and actually beat NCAA Tournament teams Pomona-Pitzer, Michigan and UC Davis during the regular season ““ is sitting at home this weekend instead of competing for the national championship.
“There’s been a lot of controversy in the last couple years because a team like Pomona gets in, or a team like (No. 7) Marist,” Krikorian said. “But we need that. We need that for our sport to continue to grow.”
In the seven years that women’s water polo has been an NCAA sport, no team outside of the MPSF has won the championship, but the sport’s popularity is still on the rise.
“We’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth over the last five or 10 years, but it’s not going to continue if the sport’s going to be dominated by California teams,” Krikorian said. “Giving (smaller schools) an opportunity to come to the NCAAs gets other colleges excited. The fact that they could possibly make NCAAs gives them more of a reason to add women’s water polo as one of their varsity sports.
“There are some people who complain that the best eight teams aren’t there, but when the season starts, we all play with the same rules.”