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Bruin men's water polo not content to rest on its laurels going into the SoCal Tournament

Junior attacker Griffin White (5) and the No. 2 men’s water polo team bring a 7-1 record into the SoCal Tournament this weekend in Los Alamitos. All the men’s water polo teams in the MPSF will participate in the tournament.

Men’s water polo
SoCal Tournament
Saturday-Sunday
Los Alamitos
No live stats



Info: The Bruins will play Air Force in the first round of the tournament.

By Emma Coghlan

Sept. 30, 2011 3:02 a.m.

Coach Adam Wright is anything but presumptuous.

Though the No. 2 UCLA men’s water polo team is nearing the season’s halfway mark with only one tally in their loss column, Wright has no reason to rely on the team’s success.

“It’s what they always say in team sports,” Wright said. “Every game is a new day.”

“When you play a team you’ve beat before, you’ve improved,” junior attacker Griffin White said. “But you also know they’ve improved; teams get better as the season goes on.”

The team goes into the SoCal Tournament in Los Alamitos this weekend preparing to face some of the top teams in the nation. Although the Bruins have faced and beaten several of these teams in previous matchups this season, they are going into the tournament with a fresh outlook.

“The result of a past game has no effect on a future game, especially in such a balanced conference” Wright said.

The conference to which Wright refers, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, is home to nine schools for water polo, all of whom will participate in this weekend’s tournament, along with Pomona, UC San Diego, UC Davis, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara, Princeton and UCLA’s first-round competitor, Air Force.

Tournament play, as opposed to single-game play, has its pros and cons for the team. There is uncertainty about who the team will face after the first round and little time to rest.

On the other hand, though, the team and coaches have ample time to observe other teams’ strengths and weaknesses to prepare to play them.

“We don’t just focus on one team, we have to take it game by game,” said redshirt senior center Brett Hays, one of the team’s leading scorers. “There’s more mental and physical preparation involved.”

“You have to be ready for more surprises,” White said.

The team has 14 or 15 players that it could play each game, which keeps the team fresh as they can sub in and out.

“No one carries this team,” Wright said. “One game, it’ll be Person A who makes the difference, the next it might be Person B.”

While the group focuses on becoming a stronger team, there was a personal honor bestowed upon one of the Bruins this week. Griffin White was named the KAP7 MPSF Player of the Week.

He scored three goals in UCLA’s game against Pepperdine on Sept. 23.

He followed up that performance the next afternoon with three more against Loyola. UCLA won both games 11-7.

“Griffin’s been doing an excellent job,” Wright said. “It’s nice to get accolades, but the team is a strong group.”

“I was excited to find out I won,” White said. “But I didn’t let it get to my head or anything. The big picture is the entire team, and I just want to do what I can to help them.”

This is the first time a Bruin has won the Player of the Week title since goalkeeper Chay Lapin took the honor in 2009.

The Bruins are actively working on defense, because, according to Hays and Wright, they know that if they can hold other teams to six goals at most, they are in a position to win.

The team has only scored fewer than 10 goals in two games this season: the 6-5 win against California that took UCLA to the final round of the NorCal Tournament, where they then lost to USC 10-8.

“You have to come in with the right mind-set,” Wright said. “You might win one day, but if you come in relying on that, you could come out on the other side of it.”

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Emma Coghlan
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