Winning streak is broken, but Bruin defense is not

It can be understood if the UCLA men’s water polo team
isn’t, as a whole, in a very good mood this week. Coming off
last Friday’s road loss to UC San Diego, a game which hosted
the largest crowd ever at UCSD’s new Canyonview West Pool,
resulting in the first Bruin loss in the 44-game history of the
rivalry, and faced with one of the toughest draws ever handed out
at this upcoming weekend’s SoCal Tournament, it
wouldn’t be surprising if the Bruins were feeling a little
down.

But they’re not. Not discouraged, anyway. They are,
however, not in any mood to repeat their performance against the
Tritons.

“We got lazy (against San Diego),” said coach Adam
Krikorian. “We just weren’t putting in the extra
effort, we couldn’t find any energy. I was disappointed with
the way we played.”

Particularly at fault was the Bruins’ normally dominant
defense. The Bruins surrendered 13 goals against the Tritons, 5
more than their previous season high. While Krikorian admitted that
the raucous crowd was a factor, he rejected the notion that the
noise sufficiently explains UCLA’s poor performance.

“I told the guys that’s the loudest environment
they’ll probably play in all year, maybe in their
careers,” he said. “But there’s no reason we
can’t still execute in an environment like that.”

Junior center Marco Santos, whose season-high three goals led
the team, agreed with Krikorian’s assessment of the crowd,
and says they’ll have to work on bringing their defense back
up to form this week to be successful this weekend.

“The crowd had an effect on San Diego I think, but it
shouldn’t take us out of our game,” Santos said.
“After Friday we really need to work on our defense, field
blocking and driving defense. There are just a lot of little
details that add up. Communication is the biggest thing, helping to
cover up. Obviously, that was harder with the crowd.”

Whatever improvement is going to take place will have to take
place quickly. The Bruins open this weekend’s tournament with
games against Stanford and Long Beach State, and face potential
matchups with Berkeley and USC in the later rounds.

“This tournament is going to be really tough for
us,” said Krikorian. “We have one of the toughest
draws, maybe the toughest ever. In order to win we’re going
to have to go through our three main rivals (Stanford, Cal and
USC), and that’s never been done. It’s not going to be
easy.”

Although UCLA has already beaten Stanford twice this season, the
Bruins aren’t about to look past the Cardinal to the Trojans
and Golden Bears, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 respectively.

“The more you play a team the more familiarity you get,
and that usually makes for a tough defensive battle,”
Krikorian said. “It’s always tough to beat a team three
times in one season, and it’s not like we’ve beaten
them handily the first two times.”

The Bruins look forward to the tough competition on their
schedule.

“(Our teams) have had years of rivalry, so it’s
always going to be a good game,” Krikorian said.
“Stanford is a great team, and we like to play tough
opponents. The hard way is the best way, right?”