No. 1 men’s water polo aims to ride winning streak over Cal

It’s been three years since UCLA last dropped a game to rival California.

This season, the No. 1-ranked Bruins (19-0, 3-0 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) will look to continue five-game win streak against the No. 3 Golden Bears (16-3, 2-0) including two defeats in both the Kap7 NorCal and SoCal invitationals.

The Bruins will also be facing No. 7 UC Irvine, a team to which UCLA has not suffered a loss since 2007, on Sunday.

The upcoming games between both Cal and UC Irvine serve as another opportunity for UCLA to not only continue its winning streak, but also continue its historical winning trend against against the two highly-ranked teams.

“Our focus right now is on Cal. We totally understand how good of a team Cal is. They have so many dynamic players,” said coach Adam Wright. “From their centers, outside guys … they have a good goalie. We understand the task at hand and we understand we have to get a lot better this week to be successful with them.“

Headed into this weekend, the Bruins have expressed the importance of not becoming complacent. They attribute their perfect record to the work ethic that they continue to drill into their season.

“One of our biggest things is consistency,” said freshman goalkeeper Alex Wolf. “We think that being complacent and comfortable is a weakness. We try to get better with each game even if we are playing a team who’s not at our level. Each game is an opportunity to get better.“

Wright said that a main goal to take away from these upcoming games is to improve from the past games against both Cal and UC Irvine.

“We played (Irvine) a week ago, but we have to take what we’ve learned from them in games from the past,” Wright said. “We understand that we have no bearing on the games that are coming up and the reality is, it‘s two really good teams. The reality is we know every conference game is really a dog fight.”

So far this season, the Bruins have outscored their opponents 281-97, led by junior attacker Ryder Roberts with a total of 35 goals.

Offensively Cal has put up similar numbers to UCLA, scoring a total of 275 goals thus far. Cal recently moved up from the No. 4 ranking position to the No. 3, sending Stanford into the No. 5 spot in the NCAA polls.

“Cal has a lot of talent with very, very strong players,” Wolf said. “They’re also a very fast team they work the counterattack a whole lot which is a challenge. They are a very emotional team and they have a lot of ups and downs, while we try to stay engaged.”

The Bruins are well aware of the Golden Bears’ speed and agility as the first matchup against the two teams was only separated by a pair of goals in an 8-6 UCLA win. In the second meeting, UCLA was able to adapt to Cal and pull away with a five point cushion 13-8.

“Obviously they are a great team,” said junior goalkeeper Garrett Danner. “They are always a hard team to play against because they are very active. (But) we know that if we stay to our style of play and keep it UCLA water polo we will be fine. We won’t have anything to worry about.”