By Eric Perez
Daily Bruin Contributor
The UCLA men’s water polo team, ranked second in the
nation and tied for first place in the Mountain Pacific Sports
Federation, head up to the Bay Area today for the 2001 Northern
California tournament hosted by top-ranked Stanford University.
Along with the Bruins (5-1 overall, 3-0 MPSF) and the Cardinal
will be some of the top teams in the nation, including No. 3
Pepperdine and No.4 USC.
This is the first big tournament for UCLA this year and will be
key leading up to the MPSF Championships come November.
The Bruins first tournament was supposed to be the Southern
California Tournament. Hosted by USC, it was scheduled for Sept.
15-16 but was cancelled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
The event would have featured all top 10 teams in the nation.
MANDY WHITING Sophomore driver Albert Garcia
waits to pass in Saturday’s 10-6 conference win over USC. UCLA is
currently ranked No. 2 overall. In the Bay Area, the Bruins will
face an excruciating schedule of four games in two days beginning
first with the Air Force Academy on Saturday at 10:50 a.m. Provided
the Bruins win, as expected, they would face the winner between
Long Beach State and University of the Pacific later in the day at
4:20 pm.
“Tactically we are going to do the same stuff that we have
done,” UCLA head coach Adam Krikorian said. “In
preparing mentally for four teams in two days, we have to be able
to keep our energy and focus and mental edge over the course of two
days.”
Senior two-meter attacker Alfonso Tucay stressed the mental
challenge of playing in a tournament at this level of
competition.
“It’s more of a mental thing, I guess,” he
said. “Not only to get fired up for one game but for
four.”
While the Bruins would do well for themselves to win this
tournament, historically UCLA has had terrible luck with the NorCal
tournament losing to UC Irvine in the 1998 finals and to USC in the
1999 finals. In 2000 UCLA defeated USC in the championship game
11-9, but had to forfeit the game and tournament championship to
USC for having used an ineligible player.
This year it is hard to imagine the tournament championship not
going through Stanford, though the Bruins would prefer to take this
tournament on one game at a time.
“If we were a better team we would look forward to
that,” Krikorian said about a possible rematch with Stanford
in the championship game. “But we’re not good enough
for that yet. We need to concentrate on Air Force and a possible
match-up with either Pacific or Long Beach. But beyond that
we’re not going to talk or think about anyone else before
Saturday.”