CHRIS BACKLEY Sean Kern fends off a UC
Irvine player as he prepares to pass the ball earlier this season.
UCLA earned a berth to the Final Four. UCLA 6 CAL
5
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. “”mdash; The MPSF tournament championship
game came down to two teams that needed to win the tournament for a
chance to win the national title. So on Sunday night, by the slim
score of 6-5, the UCLA men’s water polo team prevailed over
the Cal Golden Bears.
“We had to win,” said senior Brian Brown. “You
got to give it all you got. That’s what we did.”
As winner of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament,
the Bruins receive an automatic berth to this weekend’s water
polo Final Four. One other MPSF team will receive the at-large bid
to the Final Four at Pepperdine, but coming into the weekend,
neither Cal (16-9) ““ the No. 4 seed of the tournament ““
or UCLA (21-3) ““ the No. 2 seed who recently had five games
taken away from them as penalty for playing an ineligible player
““ were relying on that.
“We had to win if we wanted to go to the NCAAs and repeat
as champions,” said Bruin freshman Albert Garcia. Asked if
there was any hope of getting the berth if they hadn’t won
the title, Garcia said, “There was no way.”
So they played like their championship and season depended on
it.
Brown opened the scoring for the Bruins with two goals in the
first period, but both times Cal caught up with goals of its own.
Then, just before the half ended, Cal freshman Attila Banhidy put
one in that had the Bears leading 3-2 going into the half.
But that was Cal’s only lead of the game. In the third
period Brown had two more goals ““ prompting the announcer to
say, “Brian Brown 4, Cal 3″ ““ to tie the score
and give the Bruins the lead again.
“He gave us a definite emotional lift with those two shots
in the third quarter,” UCLA coach Guy Baker said.
In the fourth period Bruin senior Sean Kern scored to put UCLA
up by two, before Cal senior Eldad Hazor tossed a long one in to
close the gap. Bruin sophomore Matt Flesher scored UCLA’s
final goal of the night putting the Bruins up 6-4.
But the Bruins weren’t in the clear yet. With a minute
left, Bruin junior Jeff Pflueger was ejected from the game, and
Hazor took advantage of the 6-on-5 situation with a quick shot to
bring the Bears one goal closer.
And with 39 seconds left, the Bruins ran out the clock as the
Bears went for the steal. With four seconds left in the game Cal
got the ball and threw a desperate shot the length of the pool. But
the ball flew wide left, and Baker raised his fist in triumph.
“I liked the way our players kept going,” Baker
said. “They hung in there mentally. They’ve had a
trying month.”
When asked if there was any positive to the game, Cal coach
Peter Asch simply said, “No.”
Hazor was more encouraging. Asked the same question, he began
listing his teammates.
“Adam Metzger and Mike West and Jerry Smith had a lot of
heart. They played 100 percent,” he said.
“The plan was to get to the final and we did that, but one
game means everything.”
The game was about defense as well. Cal sophomore goalie Russel
Bernstein, who had 11 saves, kept the game much closer than it
could’ve been. The final score only had the teams one goal
apart, but UCLA took 30 shots compared to Cal’s 14.
On the Bruins’ side of the pool, goalie Brandon Brooks
only needed five saves and was thankful that his teammates made his
job easy.
“The guys on my team played great defense,” he said.
“In big games you gotta play big.”
To get to Sunday’s final game, the Bruins first beat
seventh-seeded Pacific 13-6 on Friday, and sixth-seeded Pepperdine
9-4 on Saturday in the semifinals.