BERKELEY — The similarity between tonight’s NCAA semifinal and the last time No. 2 UCLA and No. 3 California played each other was eerie.
UCLA clawed back from a three-goal deficit to force overtime, key players on both teams were out because of foul trouble – the one difference, however, was what mattered in the end.
The Bruins lost to the Bears 9-8, in what was to become their final game of the 2016 season Saturday evening under the Spieker Aquatics Complex lights.
“Sometimes you can walk away with regret, I wish this or I wish that, there’s none,” said coach Adam Wright. “These guys have nothing to regret, they left everything out there, and that’s the most important thing at the end of the day.”
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It came down to missed opportunities and details, Wright said. But for the first two quarters, it seemed like neither his team nor the Bears missed any.
Both teams locked down on defense. Just two weeks ago, the score at halftime was 5-3 in Cal’s favor. Tonight, it was 2-1.
The three total goals in the first two quarters were less than any other game UCLA or Cal had played the entire year.
Part of that was because the Bears made the Bruins work to get the ball into center. They pressed on the perimeter and nearly always fronted whoever was in the position.
Still, UCLA got senior center Gordon Marshall the ball a few times in the first half, but each time he stepped out for a shot, Cal goalie Lazar Andric rose up and sent it packing the other way.
The goalie finished with 12 saves, and often, Andric would pop out of cage and steal the ball, taking away the Bruins’ chance to get anything – an exclusion or a shot – out of center.
“We knew that Lazar was going to come with a good performance – I don’t know if I thought it was going to be that good, but he saved our butt a lot of times and made that goal look really small,” said Cal coach Kirk Everist. “We’re kind of used to that, we’ve been on the wrong side of that with Garrett (Danner) on a number of occasions.”
Ten of Andric’s saves came in the first half. Combined, the goalies on both teams only recorded two saves in the last two quarters, which is when the Bruins got a lot of help.
The third quarter has been their best quarter throughout the year, and they came back to tie the game at four after two of Cal’s most experienced players, Chandler Jarrels and Nick Carniglia, exited the game with three exclusions. Carniglia was rolled with a misconduct, and Jarrels was called for his third in transition.
Though it fought back to a tie, UCLA gave up two goals in the final minute of the quarter and was down 6-4 going into the fourth – the same score after three quarters two weeks ago as well.
Johnny Hooper, Cal’s leading scorer, made the deficit three, and Wright called a timeout.
“I think a lot of teams break at 7-4 in the fourth quarter,” Wright said. “What we were able to do was not only get ourselves back in the game, but put ourselves in a position in the fourth to close the game out and then put ourselves in a position to ultimately get into overtime and win.”
Within a minute after they broke out of the huddle, goals from senior attacker Ryder Roberts and junior utility Alex Roelse had the Briuns within one. Two possessions later, and thanks to scores from sophomore defender Warren Snyder and senior defender Chancellor Ramirez, UCLA had not only completely overcome the deficit, but was up a goal with less than four minutes to play.
“That’s a championship team for a reason, that’s a team that went on an ungodly run of wins for a reason,” Everist said. “You were going to have to rip it out of their hands … all season when we’d get a lead on them, they’d find a way to come back and get back in the game, and they did that again tonight.”
Cal evened the game on their next offensive possession, and in overtime, denied UCLA every single one of their opportunities.
The Bruins had four offensive chances to get a goal across in the first overtime period, but failed to convert any, and at the end of the day, they were standing on the deck watching Cal celebrate in front of a home crowd.
Roberts didn’t echo the same sentiment Wright had in the press conference. When he was posed his only question – about regret – he broke up his response with long pauses.
“Hopefully with time I can put it in perspective, what Adam was saying earlier,” Roberts said. “Hopefully it doesn’t take too long to realize what this group has accomplished because it’s truly great, but I think it’ll be pretty normal to think about those things tonight and in the near future.”