NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Robin
Beauregard competes against Santa Barbara earlier this
season. The Bruins lost 7-4 to Stanford on Friday, then beat SJSU
10-4 the next day. Stanford d. UCLA 7-4
UCLA d. SJSU 10-4
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The No. 2 UCLA women’s water polo team suffered its third
straight loss to top-ranked Stanford in Palo Alto on Friday,
falling 7-4 and helping the Cardinal further solidify its grip on
first place in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.
After beating the San Jose State Spartans the next day, the
Bruins are now 13-3 overall, 8-1 in conference play, while Stanford
continues its perfect streak of 20-0 overall and 9-0 in the
MPSF.
“We know that we should beat them,” sophomore Mari
Joyce said. “They’re definitely beatable. It’s
just a matter of everything coming together for us.”
UCLA struck first when junior Kelly Heuchan scored with 3:41
left in the first quarter, but Stanford tied the game a little more
than a minute later on Margie Dingeldein’s goal.
In the second quarter, the Cardinal scored three goals to take a
4-1 lead going into the half. Early in the third quarter, they
scored twice more to take a 6-1 lead over the Bruins.
Later that quarter, UCLA senior Coralie Simmons scored two goals
to close the gap to 6-3, and Heuchan added one more to keep
Stanford’s lead at two goals, but that was it for UCLA
scoring. Then, with 13 seconds left, Stanford had one last
goal.
“We don’t ever play badly against Stanford,”
Joyce said. “It’s just a matter of all the aspects of
our game being there at the same time. We’ll have good
defense and not be able to shoot the ball, or we’ll be able
to shoot the ball but we won’t have good defense.”
Bruin Head Coach Adam Krikorian’s response was divided
after the game.
“He was happy overall with our play, but he’s just a
little upset that we can’t put four quarters together,”
Joyce said.
The Bruins stayed with the Cardinal 1-1 in the first quarter and
managed to chip away from the five-goal deficit by the final
quarter.
“But during the quarters in the middle, we let off and
that’s when they jumped on us,” Joyce said.
The loss puts UCLA second in the conference standings behind
Stanford, but Joyce said that the standings weren’t what was
important about the game.
“We really wanted to win, but it doesn’t change
where we stand,” she said. “(A win) would’ve been
more to get us on an emotional roll and pass that line that we just
haven’t crossed with Stanford yet.”
Perhaps a win would’ve been the best inspiration, but a
loss was what made the Bruins play so hard the next day. On
Saturday, the Bruins redeemed themselves with a 10-4 win over the
No. 5 San Jose State Spartans (12-10, 4-5) in a game that saw seven
Bruins score.
“I felt kind of sorry for San Jose that we had to play
them right after that loss (to Stanford) because we were definitely
upset about it,” Joyce said.
“San Jose, they’re probably the next best team after
Stanford, us, Cal and USC,” she said. “We weren’t
gonna take them lightly, and we weren’t gonna lose to them
either.”
Next up for UCLA is UC Irvine on April 20.