Bruins win MPSF Championship
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 2, 2010 9:40 p.m.
UCLA’s women’s water polo team sent a strong message to the rest of the country over the weekend: Don’t forget about us.
Led by their scrappy defense and fueled by the home crowd at Spieker Aquatics Center, the fifth-seeded Bruins (20-7) raised the MPSF Tournament trophy Sunday after putting together back-to-back wins against Stanford and USC, the top two teams in the country.
It’s safe to say that few could have seen this coming. UCLA went a combined 0-4 against the two teams over the course of the regular season and was outscored by a combined 48-18 margin in those games.
Yet it was UCLA coach Brandon Brooks standing on the pool deck, hands held high over his head in joy to salute the packed crowd at Spieker after his team took down second-seeded USC (22-3) 8-7 in the title game to earn the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“It feels surreal,” Brooks said. “I’ve always believed we could be a really good team, and it’s nice for us to really start playing like I think we can.”
The Bruins opened the game by jumping out to a 3-0 lead on USC and led from start to finish, although the Trojans did make it interesting late by cutting the deficit to one with 49 seconds remaining. Junior center Grace Reynolds and sophomore utility KK Clark led the team’s balanced attack by putting in two goals apiece.
Reynolds credited the inspired effort to a renewed sense of unity following a 14-5 loss to USC two weeks ago in their last regular season game.
“In the past two weeks we’ve come together as a team and just completely meshed, and everyone is on the same page right now,” she said. “We stepped it up. We needed to redeem ourselves, and that’s what we did.”
Brooks was quick to point out that it was the team’s stellar defensive play, anchored by goalkeeper Caitlin Dement, that led the way. USC earned 16 exclusions, but converted only one of those opportunities into a goal.
“We had a great performance in the cage and we had some really heads-up plays from perimeter players,” Brooks said. “We took ejections when we had to … but we were on the same page and we put in the work and the effort, and today we came out on top.”
Sunday’s win saw much of the same play that led the Bruins to a 7-6 victory one day earlier against top-seeded Stanford (24-2). UCLA got seven goals from seven different players and held the Cardinal to just one goal on their nine earned exclusions.
“I just feel like our entire team is pumped,” Dement said. “We got killed by Stanford the other time we played them, at home too, to make it even worse. I feel like after beating Hawai’i (8-6 in the quarterfinals) we kind of had a great intensity, rolling high and feeling great.”
The Bruins now get a two week break before the NCAA Tournament at SDSU.
With the MPSF title in hand, Reynolds’ prediction for the future was simple.
“I believe,” she said. “I have confidence, and we all have confidence.”
