W. water polo thirsting for national title

Friday, May 10, 1996

UCLA to face best teams in nation during weekend tournamentBy
Mark J. Dittmer

Daily Bruin Contributor

The UCLA women’s water polo team starts the national
championships today in Davis with a 24-1 mark. UC Santa Barbara
arrives at the tournament with a record of 10-22. Neither record
means a thing.

With the start of the women’s water polo collegiate
championships today, each of the 12 teams that have reached this
point start all over at 0-0. At the end of a flurry of 27 games to
be played on the UC Davis campus this weekend, ten of those teams
will have been placed, from twelfth to third. The two remaining
will play the 28th game of the weekend at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, and
the winner will go home the national champion.

"This is it," Bruin sophomore hole set Heather Wright said. "The
whole season comes down to this tournament."

The Bruins are the top seed in the tournament, but no one is
going to hand them the championship. The Bruins’ top three
challengers ­ San Diego State, California and Slippery Rock
­ probably smell blood after UCLA’s loss to the Bears two
weeks ago. The Bruins suddenly look vulnerable, and the race for
the championship looks a lot more wide open.

The Aztecs (20-6) have lost to UCLA by one goal in each of their
last two meetings, and they have beaten Cal twice. If all goes as
expected, the Bruins will meet fourth-seeded SDSU in the semifinals
on Saturday.

Cal (28-5) is the third seed. They obviously have their reasons
to think that they can beat the Bruins. But their road to the
finals probably runs through Slippery Rock, the defending national
champion.

Ironically, Slippery Rock’s record (25-0) is what UCLA’s would
be if not for the loss to Cal. Slippery Rock still holds only the
second seed in the tournament, despite their undefeated record, due
to the relative lack of competition on the East Coast.

Teams from the East are not being given very much respect going
into this tournament. After Slippery Rock, the next six seeds are
Western teams, including eighth-seeded Santa Barbara.

Eastern teams fill out the rest of the draw, with Maryland,
Michigan, Michigan State and Brown seeded ninth through twelfth,
respectively. Slippery Rock will have its first chance to show it
can beat teams from the West in this tournament.

Whoever the Bruins play, their attitude has changed since the
Cal loss. Said Wright: "I think that loss might have lit a fire
under us. Now we’re like, ‘Whoa, we have to play our best to
win.’"

If the Bruins had entered the tournament undefeated, they might
not have remembered that.

"I think during the latter part of this season, we got kinda
bored, kinda complacent," senior driver Jill Buckley said. "The
loss to Cal triggered our change in attitude. It was a wake-up
call; it snapped us out of our mundane zone. Now we’re back to our
old selves."

Whatever the Bruins are now, they are not bored or
complacent.

"We just want to get into the water and start playing," senior
Leslie Hunter said. "Especially after coming off of a loss, we want
to show everyone the level of water polo we can play."

"We’re totally fired up," Buckley added. "It’s gonna be a lot of
fun."

PATRICK LAM/Daily Bruin

Amanda Gall and her fellow Bruins hope to be crowned national
champions.