Graduate student center Ava Johnson went on a three-goal tear in the final quarter to tie the game with 47 seconds left, seemingly sending the Bruins to overtime.

But the Golden Bears had other plans, as attacker Claire Rowell buried a shot with 18 seconds to go to earn the third-place finish on the weekend.

No. 3 seed UCLA women’s water polo (20-7, 4-2 MPSF) dropped the third-place match of the MPSF tournament to No. 4 seed California (19-9, 3-3), with a 12-11 final score in Sunday afternoon’s contest. The Bruins got off to a slow start, scoring only one goal in the first quarter for just the fourth time this season.

“We were definitely a little more tense. We always try our hardest to come out with lots of energy,” Johnson said. “Having energy going into big games like this fuels you for the entire game, but I could tell that we were a little bit tense, and that reflected through the score.”

The other three times the Bruins were held to just one goal in the first period came against UC Irvine, Hawai’i and Cal – when the pair faced off at the Barbara Kalbus Invitational.

The invitational match was also a consolation match where the Bruins lost, something coach Adam Wright said he talked to the team about pre-match.

Sophomore attacker Molly Renner added that Wright told the team that despite the tough weekend, it will be important to move forward.

“In the future, if we ever lose the day before we have another game, I think we’ve just got to put it behind us and play to our full potential,” Renner said. “We have nothing to lose, so just go for it.”

The Bruins went up 4-2 in the second quarter, only to drop four unanswered to the Golden Bears. In the time that Cal buried four in the cage, UCLA committed three offensive fouls and missed three shots.

Wright said the key to limiting opportunities for the other team to score multiple in a row – as it happened against both Cal and eventual conference champion Stanford – is execution.

“It’s a confidence thing in certain moments,” Wright said. “When we do things at a consistent level, we’re a completely different team and that starts with believing. There’s a lot of good things happening, but you got to learn to be consistent from an execution standpoint, from a trust standpoint, and we still got a ways to go.”

In the final quarter, Johnson scored three consecutive goals for the Bruins, beginning with one off of an assist from redshirt senior goalkeeper Georgia Phillips eight seconds after a timeout called by Wright. Johnson finished the game with four goals, a tournament high for the Bruins.

Johnson – who played in her final MPSF tournament – said she just went out and fought in the final quarter.

“Something we talked a lot about throughout this weekend is fighting, not physically fighting, but go out there and fight. You can’t win if you’re just going through the motions,” Johnson said. “I was lucky that I was open, but just kind of putting my head down and grinding, and when you find yourself in those tough situations, it’s important that you’re just fighting your way out of it the entire time.”

With an at-large bid likely coming the Bruins’ way, Johnson said the team is turning toward the NCAA tournament in two weeks. The end-of-season competition will be the final for the team’s graduate students.

Johnson added that the team needs to regroup in order to come out strong at the NCAAs.

“It’s super important that we come together on Monday and have a really big talk about how we want to finish the season,” Johnson said. “Putting all of our ducks in a row and making sure we’re not letting this weekend affect us moving forward.”