Thursday, April 9, 1998
Top-seeded Bruins defend title at MPSF tournament
WATERPOLO: San Diego State, UCSB threaten UCLA in early
rounds
By Steve Kim
Daily Bruin Staff
The season’s winding up – it’s crunch time.
The UCLA women’s water polo squad takes off for the University
of the Pacific in Stockton, California, to defend their MPSF
(Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) conference title.
As back-to-back conference and national champions, a lot is at
stake for these Bruins.
"It’s a huge deal," junior Catherine von Schwarz said. "It’s
pretty big for all of the teams here to win the Pac-10, so it’s
just as big of a deal for us to win the MPSF."
Because not all Pac-10 schools have every sports program, like
water polo and volleyball, MPSF was formed to combine teams from
the Pac-10, Big West and WAC (Western Athletic Conference)
regions.
The Bruins are in one of two tournament brackets. Friday, they
will play University of the Pacific in the morning and UC Santa
Barbara in the afternoon.
They will continue Saturday afternoon against San Jose State and
evening against San Diego State. No. 2 Stanford and No. 3
California are in the other bracket; the winner of which will play
for the conference title on Sunday.
As the No. 1-ranked team, the Bruins enter the three-day
tournament in a favorable position. In their bracket the biggest
challengers will be San Diego State and UCSB.
Last weekend San Diego State came out strong with a physical
game. Although the Bruins had the final word, the Aztecs kept the
game tied 4-4 through the third quarter.
"San Diego State has a lot of size, and they attacked us from
the start," junior Amanda Gall said. "We’re going to play hard
against them and do better than how we did last weekend."
UCSB has yet to beat the Bruins.
But having beaten San Diego Sate three times this season, they
are also likely to keep the Bruins on their toes.
"San Diego State has given us everything we could ask for, but
UCSB beat them the day before," said UCLA head coach Guy Baker.
So it’s unpredictable who’s going to give us the biggest
challenge. It really depends on how we play them on that given
day."
Playing tournaments throughout the season has given the Bruins
many opportunities to play against the same teams. What sets this
tournament apart is the fact the conference championship is on the
line.
"There’s some bragging rights that goes with that, but what
makes it more important than other tournaments is it’s closer to
the national championship," said UCLA assistant coach Adam
Krikorian. "We played the same teams a lot of times, but as the
season goes on, we want to play better as progress toward the
national."
The Bruins have been doing just that, and their quality of play
is backed by consistent practice sessions which has been crucial
especially after spring break.
"Spring break we had practice here and practice there," von
Schwarz said. "We need consistent training to play consistently in
our games. Since we came back, we’ve been able to stay on track but
we’re still striving.
"Guy makes the comment that our bodies are not going to feel
good until the national championship weekend because we’re still
working hard towards being the best we can be."
While the Bruins are still peaking, they are far from lagging.
They have no intention of sacrificing the conference title from
focusing solely for the national title.
Baker said, "This is a conference championship and as far as
that goes, we’re the two time defending conference champions and we
have no goals or aspirations to ever give that up."