Final mistakes muddy the waters
By Daily Bruin Staff
March 3, 2002 9:00 p.m.
 OSCAR ALVAREZ Junior Robin Beauregard
helps overpower San Jose State in UCLA’s 10-3 on Saturday.
Stanford 6 UCLA 4
By Regina Yeh
Daily Bruin Contributor
The moments before noon on Sunday had a heavy air of expectation
among players and supporters gathered at Sunset Canyon Recreation
Center. The day before, UCLA defeated San Jose State 10-3. But it
was the contest against Stanford, however, that the Bruins sought
after.
“San Jose was a good warm up so we didn’t have to
play Stanford cold, and it put us into the game mentality,”
sophomore center Natalie Golda said.
No. 2 ranked UCLA (8-3, 2-1 MPSF), having twice lost to
Stanford, had prepared for a possible turn of events against the
top-ranked Cardinal. But as it turned out, taking on Stanford
(10-0, 2-0) perhaps called for an intensity that proved too great
to handle.
The match-up began, the players at the two sides of the pool
coursing through the water heading towards one another to lay claim
on the ball. It seemed as if control was passed back and forth
between the Bruins and Cardinal in a matched pace of passing and
shooting towards the net.
“Our defense was holding down, but we needed to be a lot
more aggressive, instead of being pushed around by Stanford,”
head coach Adam Krikorian said.
Third quarter ended with the Cardinal ahead of the Bruins, the
score now 4-3. The back-and-forth scoring also stopped when
Stanford increased their lead with another goal at the beginning of
the fourth quarter.
UCLA senior center defender Jenny Lamb netted a goal, making it
5-4 with only a few minutes remaining. The crowd cheered on the
Bruins as Krikorian called a second time out, 1:20 on the clock.
Everyone on the UCLA side demanded the fullest comeback.
“We made more mistakes than Stanford did, and some of
those mistakes lost us some goals,” junior attacker Jessica
Lopez said. “But we have the capability of beating
them.”
Time out ended and the clock resumed. Seconds melted away as
rough and powerful exchanges in the water followed; there was still
hope for another UCLA score to force a tie. There were 11 seconds
left on the clock, and then suddenly a penalty shot was declared
““ against UCLA.
The game concluded with a final score of Stanford 6, UCLA 4.
“We were hoping to win today. Maybe a few errors that slid
past us were things that we hadn’t worked on in practice,
that we should have,” junior attacker Mari Joyce said.
Critiquing the game performance, Krikorian emphasized specific
game plays and improvement on them.
“I didn’t think we did a very good job in terms of
power play,” Krikorian said. “We needed just to play
better, and some of our better players need to have better
game.”
“Looking back, as a coach, I wish I could have done a few
things differently,” he added. “This game was a tough
one to take ““ but a team with as much talent and ability as
we have will believe in anything they can do up to the last
minute.”
