The No. 3 UCLA women’s water polo team found itself down by one goal to No. 2 USC with 23 seconds left on Saturday afternoon at the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center.
The Bruins had one final opportunity to send the game into overtime.
With the clock running down to six seconds, the ball came to senior attacker Anne Belden, who fired a shot past the outstretched fingers of Trojan goalie Ilse van der Meijden, only to see it ricochet off the goalpost and settle into a corner of the pool.
Belden’s shot was the final act in an edge-of-your-seat game in which USC withstood UCLA’s late-game rally to defeat the Bruins (20-5, 5-2 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) 11-10 in their final regular-season match.
The crosstown rivals traded goals back and forth throughout the match, with the Women of Troy (19-1, 6-0) getting more than a one-goal lead just once. The throngs of boisterous red- and blue-clad fans crammed into Sunset Canyon only accentuated the intense atmosphere.
“I think it must have been a pretty fun game to watch,” UCLA coach Adam Krikorian said. “There was a lot of energy, very typical of a UCLA-USC game. It was a pretty neat environment.”
The Bruins capitalized on a number of breakaway opportunities throughout the match, and for the most part were able to penetrate the Trojan defense.
Freshman KK Clark had a hat trick in arguably the biggest game of her career, while freshman Sarah Orozco and sophomores Priscilla Orozco and Megan Burmeister added one apiece.
Senior Katie Rulon had four goals on Senior Day, which was also the final home match for goalkeeper Brittany Fullen and attackers Belden and Tanya Gandy.
The Bruin offense was especially efficient, however, the team’s defense was unusually porous.
“We’re going to improve our defense,” Rulon said. “When the other team scores 11 goals on us, it probably isn’t very good.”
Although UCLA commonly grinds out wins on the strength of its suffocating defense, the Bruins were inconsistent on their own side of the pool against the Trojans and failed numerous times to pick up the opposing attackers.
“We had to do a better job defensively,” Krikorian said. “Scoring 10 goals should be enough to win a game. We were a little out-of-sync defensively, as their center, Kami Craig, did a nice job on us, and we needed to be sharper and quicker.”
The teams exchanged one-goal leads throughout the first three quarters until a USC goal with 5:55 left in the game gave the Women of Troy a 10-8 lead.
After UCLA came back to tie it 10-10 on goals by Rulon and Priscilla Orozco, USC scored with 2:41 left, to go ahead 11-10, leading to a thrilling finale.
With 23 seconds left and UCLA with the ball, Krikorian called timeout and drew up a play for the Bruins to try to equalize.
“We were trying to get Tanya Gandy the ball,” Krikorian said. “Ultimately she got open for a second, but I think we needed to execute better.”
“We had a play, and it didn’t work out,” Rulon said.
With Belden’s shot narrowly missing the upper corner of the net, the Bruins failed to avenge an 8-7 loss to the Trojans earlier in the season and missed out on tying for the regular-season MPSF Championship.
Instead, the Bruins will be the No. 3 seed in the conference tournament in two weeks, when they will face host No. 6 seed Hawai’i.
Despite the loss, Krikorian is still confident about the way his squad is playing heading into the postseason.
“I told the girls after the game that our focus now is making that one last step of improvement,” Krikorian said. “We have made great strides since the beginning of the year. We are just one step short from putting it all together, one step from turning from a very good team into a championship one.”