Women’s water polo defeats Cal, prepares for single-game matches

The Bruins’ win Sunday snapped a three-game losing streak against the Golden Bears.

It also snapped the streak of tournaments that made up the majority of No. 4 UCLA women’s water polo’s (17-3, 1-0 MPSF) nonconference schedule, which meant shifting its approach in preparation from tournaments to single-game competition.

“The nice thing about a single-game weekend is that you can just focus on that team,” said junior attacker Bronte Halligan. “(Coach Adam Wright) and the coaching staff team put in the work to make sure we were prepared, and we were and it showed.”

UCLA scored five times in the first half before No. 3 Cal (10-3, 0-1) got its first goal minutes before halftime in their second meeting of the season.

The first meeting, though, was the exact opposite.

Cal pitched a shutout against UCLA the entire first half while scoring four goals of its own Feb. 24. The loss was also the Bruins’ first and only overtime one this season, and the Bears came out on top in the end.

UCLA played both No. 7 Michigan and No. 2 Stanford the day before. The Bruins dropped 15 goals on the Wolverines in the win but had to turn around and go up against the Cardinal later that day, scoring just four times en route to a loss.

The Bruins’ three losses have all come from the last two tournaments they appeared in.

The Triton Invitational brought UCLA its first loss of the season against No. 1 USC, and then the Barbara Kalbus Invitational resulted in the Bruins’ first and only back-to-back losses of the season so far.

Freshman attacker Bella Baia said playing in tournaments is not always easy and that fatigue was a factor in the first matchup against Cal.

“It was a lot of what we saw last week, so we were very prepared,” Baia said. “We studied a lot of their plays and their tendencies, and obviously it’s easier to do that for one team instead of four or five teams.”

Preparation ties into consistency and progression – the two aspects of the game Wright said he addresses after every week.

“If we’re going to be serious about the team that we ultimately want to become, then we have to be able to concentrate on one game at a time,” Wright said.

UCLA will not have any more tournaments until the conference championships and the NCAA championships in April and May, respectively.

Wright said he believes the Bruins are fortunate to compete against the kind of competition they have played in both tournaments and conference play. He also said that in order for UCLA to be where they want to be at the end of the season, its game has to be consistent in both formats.

“It’s easier as a whole to just worry about one team, but the reality is that we have to be able to do both,” Wright said. “There’s going to be a time and place where we have to prepare for multiple teams, but this week it was great the way the team really focused in on Cal.”