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Waves not big enough to submerge UCLA’s energy

By Daily Bruin Staff

Oct. 21, 1996 9:00 p.m.

Tuesday, October 22, 1996

WATERPOLO:

UCLA brought one step closer to defending NCAA titleBy Rick
Banks

Daily Bruin Contributor

On Saturday the UCLA men’s water polo team took one more step
forward in their national title defense.

The No. 2 Bruins took advantage of a vocal partisan crowd and
their team speed to overwhelm the No. 7 Pepperdine Waves by a score
of 12-6.

With the victory, UCLA upped its record to 14-1 overall. More
importantly, the win moved the Bruins to 3-0 in the Mountain
Pacific Sports Federation conference. Pepperdine fell to 4-10
overall and 0-4 in the MPSF.

"Their experience showed," Pepperdine head coach Terry Schroeder
said. "They really took advantage of our mistakes."

The quickness of the Bruins allowed them to exploit the Wave
turnovers, turning them into fast breaks and easy scoring
opportunities.

"They’ve got great team speed," Schroeder said. "One of the
things we talked about was that we can’t give them the easy
counterattack goals, and we certainly gave up too many of
those.

The overall team speed of the Bruins allowed them to get up the
pool quickly on turnovers, creating havoc for the Pepperdine
transition game.

"One of our game plans was to go out there and counter them,"
UCLA senior Jim Toring said. "We wanted to get some of our fast
swimmers in there and get the score up right away."

The Bruins did just that, jumping out to an 8-1 advantage at the
half, paced by four of Toring’s six points in the contest.

"We did a good job against their zone in the first half and
clearly in the second quarter," UCLA head coach Guy Baker said.
UCLA scored five times in that second period, giving the team a
comfortable margin heading into the half.

The second period was the turning point of the game. Pepperdine
was knocked off track and was never able to recover.

"Once you get way behind you’ve got to change it up a little
bit," Schroeder said. "We were never really able to get into our
set defense like we wanted to."

* * *

The UCLA men’s water polo team wrapped up their first home-stand
of the season on a positive note.

With victories over Navy, 18-5, and the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst, 14-6, the Bruins closed out the weekend with
three wins over nationally ranked teams.

The Bruins continued their first-half dominance, staking
themselves to an 8-0 lead against Navy and an 11-3 advantage over
UMass.

This season, UCLA has outscored their opponents 125-51 in the
first two periods, and 226-115 overall.

Both games featured the multi-threat Bruin offense. Eleven
players scored in the Navy contest, led by Jim Toring’s three
points. James Palda’s four points led all 10 players who found
paydirt in the UMass contest.

The games gave UCLA a look at the potential NCAA representatives
from the East, provided the Bruins can fight their way through the
MPSF to get to them.

UCLA continues that quest as they travel north to face off
against Berkeley and Stanford.

* * *

Contrary to a previous report, Corbin Graham’s scoring streak
did not come to a halt against Occidental in the NorCal
Tournament.

Graham did score in that game and in the Pepperdine contest. As
of Saturday, Graham’s streak had reached 15 games.

JON FERREY/Daily Bruin

Brian Bent helped UCLA to a 12-6 victory over Pepperdine.

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