NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Freshman driver
Brett Ormsby gets ready to pass against USC in
UCLA’s 6-5 victory on Sunday. UCLA 6 USC 5
By Eric Perez
Daily Bruin Contributor
There really was something to cheer about on Saturday.
Inside the USC campus, neatly tucked away from a Trojan rally
going on in the campus epicenter, the No. 2 UCLA men’s water
polo team defeated the No. 4 USC Trojans 6-5 at the
McDonald’s Swim Center.
A couple of hours before the UCLA football team would spend the
afternoon looking for new and improved ways to lose to ‘SC
for the third year in a row, the Bruin water polo team took it to
the Trojans for the third time this year.
“USC is always tough against us, they’re always
tough at home, it’s a huge win for us,” undergraduate
assistant coach Sean Kern said. “It’s huge for momentum
for us going into the conference tournament.”
The Bruins (13-3, 7-1 Mountain Sports Pacific Federation) caught
the Trojans flat-footed at the game’s outset. Junior
two-meter Dan Yielding scored the game’s first two goals and
freshman two-meter Ted Peck added another as UCLA took an early 3-0
first quarter lead.
The Trojans tried to answer back with three goals of their own,
but two goals by freshman driver Brett Ormsby kept ‘SC (11-6,
6-2) at a distance. The Bruins went into halftime with a 5-3
lead.
Desperate to keep their tournament hopes alive, USC made a run
of their own in the third quarter scoring two goals, keeping the
UCLA offense out of sync and scoreless.
The contest was all tied up in the fourth quarter until, on a
6-5 power play, Ormsby scored a hat trick when he drove in the
backbreaking goal with 2:42 left in the match.
The UCLA defense came through, holding the Trojans to just two
goals in eight one-man advantages and keeping them under lock and
key defensively in the fourth quarter.
“To hold them on the five on six really shows the
toughness of the team,” UCLA head coach Adam Krikorian said.
“I don’t think we had a lot of toughness in the
beginning of the year, but we built it, and we developed it and I
think it showed today.”
Keeping USC scoreless in the fourth quarter was in large part
due to the play of junior all-American Brandon Brooks, who came up
big with eight saves, including a crucial final stop on a Trojan
power play to seal the victory for the Bruins.
“Showing our defensive knack, clamping down and preserving
the game when they had a power-play situation and coming up with a
huge save really gave us a lot of confidence and we preserved the
win,” sophomore driver Albert Garcia said.
A third straight loss to the Bruins have left the Trojan hopes
for an NCAA bid severely crippled while this win brings UCLA closer
to the NCAA Tournament.
“It’s what we’ve been working for all season,
a bid to the NCAA tournament, it’s what we really want so
we’re going to go the MPSF (tournament) and see what
happens,” Ormsby said. “We’ve put ourselves in
really good position, but nothing is certain, we just need to do
our best at MPSF.”