Water polo focuses on setback recovery before Stanford matchup

With only 12 games remaining in the regular season, one thing still plaguing the UCLA men’s water polo team is the challenge of recovering after a setback.

Coach Adam Wright stressed the importance of improving the team’s transition game by emphasizing how essential it is to push aside what happened in the last play and focus on the current one.

This was a problem UCLA could not overcome during last weekend’s final minutes against USC.

“We need to figure out a way to come back together as a team and do what we do best,” said freshman attacker Ryder Roberts. “When we do that, we’re a very strong team.”

However, the team has been playing strong defense this season, on average, only allowing about four and a half goals per game.

Redshirt freshman goalkeeper Garrett Danner recently had a successful weekend, playing almost three entire games and registering a total of 32 saves.

Just last Sunday against No. 4 Stanford, Danner recorded 13 saves.

According to Wright, the team had been focusing on improving their 6-on-5 “man down” play over the past month and the progress was evident as eight of Danner’s 13 saves against Stanford were on 6-on-5 opportunities.

Now the team has to look toward improving for next weekend as the Bruins travel to Northern California for a conference matchup with the Stanford Cardinal.

“They are going to be hungry and motivated,” said sophomore utility Danny McClintick.“They have some of the best players in the country and it will be a battle like it always is with them.”

The team’s approach this week will be to focus on the present moment and not look beyond today’s practice.

“Right now, (today’s) practice is the most important practice we have and when we’re done with that we will talk about (Thursday’s) practice and (so on),” said McClintick. “For now we will approach each one like it’s the most important one thus far.”