Friday, November 6, 1998
Water polo squad will face UCI, UCSD
PREVIEW: Anteaters tough challenge for UCLA; Bruins anticipate
easy victory against San Diego
By Steve Kim
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
This weekend is a battle of the UC’s as the UCLA men’s water
polo team hosts UCSD and UC Irvine.
The Bruins play UC San Diego today at 3 p.m. and face UC Irvine
Sunday at noon at the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center pool.
The weekend schedule is formatted similarly to the NCAA
tournament, where a team plays a semifinal game Friday and advance
to Sunday’s championship.
Although 10th ranked UCSD is unlikely to beat the No. 2 Bruins,
UC Irvine should pose a formidable challenge later this
weekend.
"UCSD has given good teams close games but we’re very capable of
beating them," junior goalie Parsa Bonderson said.
UCLA beat UC Irvine (by a score of 4-3) early in the season, but
the Anteaters came on top a few weeks ago in the Northern
California tournament, in which the Bruins came in second. The No.
4 team from Irvine faces a tougher challenge on Bruin territory,
but they could pull off another victory like they did at the
tournament.
"We played Stanford into overtime and we only had a couple hours
of rest before the Irvine game," explained Bonderson about the
Northern California tournament. "When you’re tired you have to make
up for that by playing smart  but our team just didn’t
execute it well."
"Every aspect of the game, we did a very poor job," UCLA head
coach Guy Baker said. "And Irvine took it to us and they played a
good game."
Self-criticism aside, UCLA is quite capable of defeating both
teams.
The Bruins stand 13-3 overall and 5-1 in conference.
They’re coming off last weekend’s loss to Stanford and a close
win over eighth-ranked Long Beach State, so they’re more intent on
maintaining the game record and adding a conference win against
Irvine.
"We’ve worked on some things this week and Friday is a good day
to test them out," assistant coach Adam Krikorian said.
"We’ll get some rest Saturday and we’ll play Sunday, like the
schedule of the NCAA tournament. Irvine can surprise us but there’s
no reason why we shouldn’t beat them."
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