Friday, 5/9/97 No. 1 Bruins plan to stay above water UCLA to
defend national title in weekend tournament
By Vytas Mazeika Daily Bruin Contributor The time has come for
the UCLA women’s water polo team to put together its best team
effort. This weekend Ann Arbor, Mich. hosts the National Collegiate
Tournament, and the other 11 teams participating are all aiming to
dethrone the Bruins (27-1) by becoming the 1997 national champions.
UCLA will open pool play Friday with contests against UC San Diego
and Maryland. The winner of this round-robin first round will come
out of the A bracket to meet the winner of the D bracket on
Saturday at 5:15 p.m. Then on Sunday, May 11, the championship
match will take place at 3 p.m. "I think our chances are good,"
UCLA coach Guy Baker said. "It is going to depend on how our team
plays and how the other teams play." The Bruins are favored to
repeat as national champions due to the team’s great balance of
scoring – UCLA has six players with 20 or more goals. Sophomore
Coralie Simmons, with 56 goals in 75 attempts, leads the way. But
the Bruins seem to lack playoff and match experience. Four of the
top six UCLA scorers are sophomores, and the other two are true
freshmen. Yet Baker is not worried about the team’s youth. "They
have a wealth of experience," Baker said. "It looks young on paper,
but there is a lot of experience." UCLA will need the entire team
to contribute in order to repeat their previous successes. Even
though Simmons has been named the Mountain Pacific Sports
Federation (MPSF) Southern Division Player of the Year for the
second consecutive season, Baker knows the team cannot depend on
just one player. "Hopefully, we will just have good team play,"
Baker said. "Probably the main strength of our team is that we play
well together. We become a lot more balanced in our scoring."
Another strength is also the team’s goalie. Nicolle Payne was hurt
earlier in the season with a herniated disk and a strained
vertebra, but she has come back strongly enough to assemble a 4.22
goals-against average in 72 quarters of play. Although Baker has
expressed the concern that come playoff time matches become very
unpredictable, Payne’s efforts should allow the Bruins to, at the
very least, stay close in every match. "You never know what is
going to happen," Baker said. "From my perspective, when you are in
the championship, things take care of themselves." So for UCLA,
things will take care of themselves if they are able to stay within
their game plan. The Bruins have rolled through most of their
opposition by outscoring opponents 242-108 this season. But in the
fourth quarter, the Bruins have only managed to edge their
opponents 37-36. But in the end, the telling statistic turns out to
be head-to-head match ups. UCLA is 13-1 against the other top seeds
this season (5-1 against Cal, 3-0 against Stanford, and 5-0 against
San Diego State). Should everything go according to the seeds, UCLA
will battle SDSU Saturday and Cal in the finals. Last season, UCLA
battled Cal (the only team to defeat the Bruins this season) for
the national title. Will history repeat itself? If all goes
according to plan, it will. CHARLES KUO/Daily Bruin Nicolle Payne
makes a save. She’ll be hoping to make plenty more at the National
Collegiate Tournament this weekend in Ann Arbor, Mich. Related
Links: US Water Polo NCAA Water Polo