Bruins stay afloat against 49ers despite prior loss

Monday, November 2, 1998

Bruins stay afloat against 49ers despite prior loss

WATERPOLO: Victory vs. Long Beach State does

little to compensate poor play in Stanford game

By Steve Kim

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Bittersweet, sweet and sour, however it is described, it wasn’t
either kind of weekend for the UCLA men’s water polo team. The
Bruins suffered a 7-5 loss to Stanford Saturday but came back to
beat Long Beach State, 9-8, Sunday.

The No. 2 Bruins fared well with the No. 4 Cardinal in the
previous weekend with a 6-4 win up North, and it had beaten
Stanford’s team even before that. Saturday, the Bruins showed
potential for a third victory as they kept an even game at 4-4 in
the first half.

Unlike the previous game, where Stanford died out at the end,
the Cardinal surged with a three-point second half, overshadowing
the Bruins’ one point and keeping it that way until the end. This
time, Stanford didn’t slack on their defense.

"It finally took us three games to figure out how to play UCLA
on defense," Stanford head coach Dante Dettamanti said. "You can’t
take away their counter attack, but you can try to neutralize it as
much as you can. We couldn’t go into the last third of the season
with three losses to UCLA, so we needed this one badly."

Stanford isn’t the only team that needed the win badly. After
this game, both teams have one conference loss. Now the race to
earn top seeding at the conference tournament is just that much
more competitive.

"Losing to Stanford, we don’t necessarily control our own
destiny in the tournament seeding," UCLA head coach Guy Baker said.
"We had some good opportunities at the goal, but I don’t think we
did a lot of little things necessary to win the game, whether it
was in passing, upping on defense, or releasing for the ball. We
had such a good week of practice so it doesn’t make sense."

On Sunday, the Bruins tried to put that loss behind them and
focus on a conference victory against eighth-ranked Long Beach
State.

They started out quickly with sophomore two-meterman Sean Kern
netting two goals with assists by sophomores Andy Bailey and Brian
Brown. Shane Lindstrom and Matt Sakatani of Long Beach each scored,
but Bruin senior Aaron Harries and sophomore Adam Wright kept the
game in check with a point each to give their team a 4-2 advantage
in the first half.

The third quarter, on the other hand, was a mess. Although four
more points were accumulated by Wright (two points), Kern, and
senior Sam Grayeli, there was a series of offensive sparks by the
49ers, including a two-pointer by junior Corey Dolley, that gave
them a six-point boost.

The game was tied by the fourth quarter. Brown quickly put one
away to give the Bruins a 9-8 lead while goalie Parsa Bonderson
successfully guarded his cage for the remainder of the game.

"We had opportunities to put this game away early on," Wright
said, "but we let them get back into it. We can’t let that happen.
It was an ugly win, but we’ll take it."

Especially after losing to Stanford the other day, the Bruins
were quite intent on not letting the Long Beach game go astray.
With both matches being conference games, it was critical that they
won at least one of the two.

"If we didn’t win this, we’d probably been out of the at-large
bid," Wright said.

The Bruins are now 13-3 overall and 5-1 in conference. Stanford
shares the same conference record as UCLA, which makes them even so
far in the tournament seeding. Stanford’s next conference game is
against the No. 1 USC Trojans, while the Bruins play No. 3 UC
Irvine.

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