The two matches on men’s water polo’s senior day both ended in victory, but each came in a starkly different manner.
On Saturday, No. 1 UCLA (24-0, 2-0 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) took down San Jose State and Whittier 10-3 and 18-5 respectively, to add to an NCAA-record 57-game winning streak.
For much of the season, the defense has helped the Bruins close out opponents and put games out of reach. However, the offense’s lack of production has been the other characteristic of this year – at the very least, the characteristic of late.
In the first game, UCLA was held to four scores in the first half, tied for the team’s second lowest offensive performance through two quarters this season. The starting line against the Spartans consisted of seven seniors, and different lineups throughout the game combined with frequent turnovers and missed penalty shots all contributed to the early struggle.
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“There were some different lineups, which is challenging; it makes the flow of the game a little different, because guys aren’t used to playing with certain people,” said coach Adam Wright. “We can’t use that as an excuse, we have to finish better. Next time I think we’ll score goals.”
The Bruins flipped the switch in the second half – six unanswered goals and a clean score sheet put the game away quickly. Senior attacker Patrick Fellner, who leads the team with 33 scores, converted a six-on-five opportunity late in the third quarter to push the advantage to 8-3.
“We were playing pretty poorly in the first half,” Fellner said. “We realized we needed to pick it up a lot … that resulted in good defense since they couldn’t score on our defense.”
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The strong offensive play continued against the Poets, as the Bruins scored 11 times in the first half. Underclassmen did much of the heavy lifting – redshirt freshman attacker Eric Goldenberg netted a career-high four goals, and freshmen attackers Jake Simpson and James Vlachonassios made two and one scores, respectively.
All three have had an immediate impact during their first competitive season in Westwood. Goldenberg was the MPSF/Kap7 Newcomer of the Week a month ago, Simpson scored in 10 of the 16 games he appeared in and Vlachonassios is fifth on the team with 16 assists.
“Our future with those guys is really bright,” Wright said. “It’s nice to see that their work is paying off, they’re only scratching the surface on where they’re going to go.”
The 18 goals against Whittier was the largest single-game offensive output since the first game of the Mountain Pacific Invitational nearly a month and a half ago.
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With just one game left in the regular season, Wright’s squad will face vastly stronger opponents from here on out. Not only does UCLA have a date set with No. 2 USC next week, but it also will face a round-robin MPSF conference tournament the week after.
And with two more games of holding opponents to six or less goals, the Bruins have held teams to that benchmark 18 times this season. Against Big Four teams that will make up the majority of its end-of-season opponents, UCLA has given up 19 goals over three games.
“If we can keep the scores down, it doesn’t matter how we play on offense,” said sophomore attacker Austin Rone.