Weekend in Preview: Women’s volleyball, swimming and diving seek improvement in Arizona
UCLA women’s volleyball will open a four game home stand this weekend against Arizona and Arizona State. The Bruins lost both matches last weekend at Washington and Washington State.(Aubrey Yeo/Daily Bruin senior staff)
Men’s water polo
Ryan Smith, assistant Sports editor
UCLA men’s water polo will take on a top-five team for the third straight week when it visits Stanford on Saturday.
The No. 4 Cardinal (15-3, 0-1 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) enter the matchup riding a nine-game win streak while the No. 3 Bruins (16-2, 0-1) are fresh off a win over Pacific last weekend.
UCLA has won the last four meetings between the two teams, not losing to Stanford since October 2014. However, the Cardinal visited Spieker Aquatics Center last season and only lost 7-6.
Five of the seven Bruin goals in that game were scored by players who are no longer on the roster and coach Adam Wright said this matchup will be more difficult considering UCLA’s defensive performance against California two weeks ago.
“We know that they like to push the offense and we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Wright said. “We had a similar test with California who is pretty offensively dynamic just like Stanford and we didn’t do a good job there.”
It remains unclear whether goalkeepers redshirt sophomore Alex Wolf or senior Aleksander Ruzic, who have recently been splitting time, will start in the cage for the Bruins.
UCLA will also play No. 11 San Jose State (13-10) on Sunday.
Swim and Dive
Kelsey Angus, assistant Sports editor
UCLA women’s swim and dive enters its fourth week of the season after a dominant performance in the Bruins’ home opener last weekend.
“I think they got some confidence that their hard work and patience pays off, so they just have to keep thinking about improving,” said coach Cyndi Gallagher.
UCLA (4-1, 1-0 Pac-12) will travel to face No. 24 Arizona (2-0, 2-0) on Friday and Arizona State (2-0, 1-0) on Saturday to open up conference competition.
Gallagher said the team’s focus is still on the details.
“We talked about it, they evaluated their swims, we talked about how you’re supposed to swim the races, race strategy, … enough to take action and then implement it,” Gallagher said.
Both Arizona teams are undefeated, but neither has faced an opponent in the top 25. Arizona opened its season with a 161-101 win over Washington State, a team UCLA beat 152-104 last weekend.
“For our sport, standings don’t really matter,” Gallagher said. “We’re not really changing things, we just want to get better. So if everyone gets better and we have that great all-in team attitude then we’ll be great.”
Women’s volleyball
Gwyneth Teo, Daily Bruin contributor
UCLA women’s volleyball suffered losses against Washington and Washington State last weekend.
“Since we got back in town, everyone was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, how was it, are things okay?'” said coach Michael Sealy. “After a weekend like that, we’re just focusing on getting much better and greater as opposed to being status quo.”
No. 18 UCLA (13-8, 6-6 Pac-12) will look to bounce back against Arizona (9-12, 3-9) on Friday and Arizona State (10-14, 0-12 Pac-12) on Saturday in the first weekend of a four-game home stand.
Sealy said that the team has been working on better preparing its offense.
“We are looking at our opponents and seeing what they like to do on blocked defense, talking earlier in the week about what we want to do offensively,” Sealy said.
The Bruins swept the Wildcats in their last meetup, snapping a three-match losing streak to Arizona. The Wildcats have lost five out of their last six games.
On the other hand, the Sun Devils remain winless in the conference but they managed to take one set off the defending national champion No. 2 Cardinal (19-2, 12-0) last Friday.
