Heading into the weekend, the UCLA men’s water polo team was hoping to grab some serious momentum going into the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament and win over the competition’s No. 2 seed on the way.
Instead, UCLA fell to the fourth seed in a devastating 9-5 defeat to Pepperdine in Malibu this Saturday.
With the loss, the second-ranked Bruins (15-6, 5-3 MPSF) were unable to break away from a three-way tie with No. 3 Stanford and No. 5 Pepperdine for second in the conference.
The team will have the next week to prepare for the conference tournament.
“There’s not a whole lot of time to work on things,” coach Adam Krikorian said. “The biggest thing is to make sure we’re in the right place mentally.”
The Bruins, who had defeated the Waves (19-6, 6-2) back in September with a score of 8-3, were up early but eventually lost control of the game’s pace. “We had a game plan and knew how to stop them and didn’t execute,” redshirt senior Krsto Sbutega said. “We let them play their game.”
Sbutega led the Bruins with a pair of goals, including the first of the game and a 5-meter penalty shot in the first period, which put UCLA up 2-1.
The early lead did not last long, however, as Pepperdine went on a 3-0 run and rushed to a 4-2 lead.
“It’s pretty simple,” Sbutega said. “We got dominated in both aspects (offensively and defensively).”
UCLA was unable to recover as J.P. MacDonell and Grant Miller paced Pepperdine with a hat trick each.
The sparse scoring from a team that had been averaging 9.70 goals per game was not from a lack of chances.
Krikorian acknowledged the team’s inadequacy in their numerous six-on-five possessions. “Where we struggled was our power-play situation,” he said. “We were 3 for 11 and (those) goals came early. By the end, we were pretty anemic.” Hoping to move on from Pepperdine, UCLA will need to rebound and prepare for the postseason that will start in the same pool as their recent loss.
Their next game will be on Friday in the Raleigh Runnels Pool at Pepperdine as the No. 4 seed in the MPSF tournament against the conference’s No. 5 seed California.
“Where we stand is a direct result of how we played in our conference,” Krikorian said. “We have a tough matchup in Cal.”
The winner of the tournament will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Championships and the runner-up will most likely get the at-large bid to complete the four-team playoff.
“It’s disappointing, but we don’t have too much time to whine and cry about it,” Sbutega said. “We made it tougher than we wanted it to be. We have to be ready right away and put together three really good games.”