Men’s water polo uses longest game hiatus thus far to prep for upcoming matches
Sophomore attacker Matthew Kacura has posted 18 goals through No. 2 UCLA men’s water polo’s first 15 games. Kacura scored at least one goal in each of the Bruins’ three games this past weekend. (Liz Ketcham/Photo editor)
By Jason Maikis
Oct. 23, 2019 1:37 a.m.
The Bruins get an extra few days to practice this week.
No. 2 UCLA men’s water polo (14-1) is in the midst of a seven-day stretch without any gameplay, its longest thus far this season. The rest period comes after a weekend in which UCLA played three games, a 14-10 win over No. 3 Pacific on Friday and victories over No. 20 California Baptist and unranked Whittier on Saturday.
UCLA started the season with back-to-back four-game weekends and only drew five days of rest in between the end of one event and start of the other, as well as its first nontournament or nonexhibition game against No. 6 Pepperdine.
UCLA enters this break coming off a six-day Saturday-to-Thursday gap between its Oct. 11 win over No. 5 UC Santa Barbara and its win over Pacific on Oct. 18. Sophomore attacker Matthew Kacura said the few extra days between five days and a full week of rest can benefit the team and its practice schedule.
“It definitely gives us time to get back into shape for a couple days,” Kacura said. “We’ll have days to recover so we can get sore in these next few days and go hard. As this weekend gets closer we’ll take it a bit easier going into the game.”
The Bruins will not see another break this long until after conference play is over, but could receive between 12 to 14 days between their last game of the MPSF Championships and the first game in the NCAA Tournament if they are selected.
Coach Adam Wright said the extra few days between contests in the middle of a long season will allow some banged-up Bruins to get healthy this week, even though the team may be physically pushing itself harder in practice.
“It’s critical our health gets better this week,” Wright said. “We are first and foremost trying to get everybody back in the pool. This is a time we can create more of a physical pace (in practice) but guys still have to get healthy.”
Wright said this week will provide some time for UCLA to get back to working on the fundamentals after a disappointing set of Saturday matches.
“This extra time between games gives us an opportunity to work on ourselves,” Wright said. “These first two, three days (in practice), we’re going to concentrate on ourselves and the phases of the game we need to get better at, and then near the end of the week we’ll start diving in on (UC) Irvine.”
Despite its injuries and quick turnarounds, UCLA has won five straight games, including three victories over top-10 teams in No. 7 Long Beach State, No. 5 UC Santa Barbara and No. 3 Pacific.
UCLA won each of those games by four goals, greater than the two-goal margin of its 10-8 win over Whittier on Saturday. Redshirt freshman attacker Henry Wilde said the team will have time to brush up on its own tactics while also putting in time for solid game planning, which helped the team against Pacific.
“A long week means long practices,” Wilde said. “We’ll get more game planning in, which is what we did more for Pacific when we played better than Saturday (against Cal Baptist and Whittier). We’ll have time to correct what we did poorly against (Cal Baptist and Whittier), which is critical if we’re going to get better going forward.”
UCLA will return to the pool from its seven-day hiatus Oct. 27 against No. 12 UC Irvine.
