UCLA men’s water polo is accustomed to winning.
Heading into the NCAA championship tournament as the top seed with a record of 27-3, the Bruins finished off the regular season undefeated in conference play, defeating a No. 1 Stanford team twice along the way.
After an uncharacteristic loss Saturday in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation semifinal, UCLA returned to its winning ways with a 10-5 defeat of USC in the third-place game, the program’s largest margin of victory against the Trojans since 1989.
Although the Bruins experienced little adversity over the course of their undefeated season, they proved in the postseason that they have the ability to respond to setbacks.
“We’ve been able to bounce back because of trust. We trust that we know what we’re supposed to do. Once we lost, the past was the past,” said senior attacker Chris Fahlsing. “I saw everyone on the team trusted what we were doing. We knew if we maintained and stayed on track that we would be successful in our next game.”
UCLA proved the diversity of its system time and time again this season – uptempo offensive aggression complementing a disciplined defensive setup. Now the Bruins head to the NCAA tournament with an extra weapon in their arsenal: composure.
UCLA battled back from losses this season with emphatic wins against then-No. 2 Cal in October and No. 3 USC this past weekend. Against the then-No. 10 Princeton Tigers, the Bruins overcame its sole first-quarter deficit of season play to win 16-3. In the few adverse moments that presented themselves this season, UCLA proved it could respond to pressure in order to win.
“We know that we need to focus against every opponent,” said senior utility Cristiano Mirarchi. “We need to be focused every moment of the game, every part of the tournament. There are a lot of good teams out there and we have to be ready for them.”
UCLA’s capacity to answer defeat in this way was lacking last season. After a similarly successful MPSF season in 2013, the Bruins dropped the MPSF semifinal match to Stanford. Unlike this year’s team, however, last season’s UCLA squad was unable to bounce back, falling 10-9 in the third-place contest to Pacific and missing out on a bid to the NCAA tournament despite a 28-4 overall record.
“It’s just a mentality, I guess. We’re focused and we’re present in the moment,” said senior attacker Paul Reynolds. “I think last year maybe we were getting ahead of ourselves, thinking about the situation that could happen after the one-point loss in that game.”
This year has been a different story. With a historical comeback win over USC and the top seed in the NCAA tournament, the 2014 UCLA season has officially survived the perils of MPSF play. Heading into the sudden-death tournament Dec. 6, the Bruins now have their sights set on returning to the NCAA title game, a competition they have failed to win for the better part of a decade.
“We need to get better in a lot of different places of our game,” Fahlsing said. “We have a lot to improve on from this past weekend. It’s important that we’re motivated on getting better every day.”