In the last regular season home game for UCLA men’s water polo, fans stood on the top level of the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center parking garage overlooking the pool far below.
The jam-packed stands, highlighted by clashing colors of red and blue, along with the line of fans who stood atop the parking structure, brought the traditional pandemonium that comes with the historic UCLA-USC rivalry to Spieker Aquatics Center on Sunday afternoon.
With or without a seat, the spectators watched as the No. 1 Bruins (25-0, 9-0 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) clinched their perfect regular season with an 11-6 win over the No. 4 Trojans (18-5, 6-3).
“Someday here we’ll get more seats to get more people in here,” said coach Adam Wright. “Our hope is to make the school proud, to make the student body proud and it would be great to have even more of them. We really appreciate the band coming out, it makes it great for these guys, they put in a lot of work and it’s for the school.”
Early in the game, the Bruins faced a two-goal deficit, but quickly redefined the pace of the game in their favor with goals from sophomore attacker Max Irving and junior attacker Ryder Roberts.
“I thought we were really present,” Wright said. “For us, presence is everything and just being in the moment. You know we got off to a slow start but we brought it back right away.”
Additional goals from junior defender Chancellor Ramirez and senior utility Danny McClintick pushed UCLA to a two-goal edge over USC, never trailing the Trojans throughout the rest of the game.
The visitors could not break through the Bruins’ defense further until 4:59 left in the third quarter. The unwavering goalkeeping from junior Garrett Danner limited USC to single-digit scoring and registered a career high of 19 saves and seven steals.
“The team played great defense,” Danner said. “They held in the zone pretty well which allowed me to basically see low percentage shots when they were taking away part of the cage, and luckily I was able to make some stops that were more difficult shots. They really funneled the ball to me well and allowed me to make some saves and we stuck to our team defense.”
Throughout the third quarter, UCLA was able to extend its lead to 9-3 on a 6-on-5 exclusion as junior center Gordon Marshall, assisted by Roberts and senior defender Anthony Daboub, crashed the cage and sent an open shot into the back of the net.
The Bruins were perfect on power plays, while the Trojans could only convert two of their 12 power-play opportunities.
With a comfortable 11-4 lead in the fourth quarter, the Bruins ran down the clock in the remaining three minutes of the game. A 5-meter penalty shot from USC’s driver Blake Edwards, along with a last-second goal from driver Chase Koplow could not overcome UCLA’s seven-goal lead at the beginning of the quarter.
“I think the score at the end, 11-6, really proves how far we’ve come as a team,” said Daboub. “We still have a lot of room to improve, we’ve got hopefully five more games, so we have to keep getting better until the last one.”
UCLA extended its winning streak to 28 games and its conference winning streak to 24. The Bruins went undefeated in regular season play and will enter the MPSF tournament as the No. 1 seed.
“We have a quick turnaround here,” Daboub said. “We’ve got a big tournament down at ‘SC where we could potentially play them again very soon, so enjoy the win now, but quickly refocus and get ready for next weekend.”