EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Senior driver
John Puffer, shown here in a game last weekend
against UCSB, will have to be at his best in the Final Four.
By Eric Perez
Daily Bruin Contributor
For the UCLA men’s water polo team, the time is now.
They have worked for this since the summer, and the season will
reach its crescendo with two more games.
It’s the Final Four.
“It’s intense,” sophomore Nick Pacelli said.
“It’s your last games of the season, that’s it.
It’s for all the marbles, it’s the big show.”
The NCAA Final Four is not to be confused with
basketball’s Final Four which begins with a 64 team field.
Water polo’s version of the Final Four begins with a field of
four teams.
The Final Four will take place this weekend in Palo Alto at the
Avery Aquatic Complex. The No. 2 Bruins’ first game is
against Loyola Marymount, whom the Bruins already defeated 9-4 on
Sept. 22.
In the other bracket, top-ranked Stanford will take on the
University of Massachusetts. No East Coast team has ever qualified
for the final game.
UCLA comes into this tournament as the two-time defending
champion and is on a quest to three-peat.
It’s a tall order, considering the Bruins lost six
starters to graduation and they now have a markedly different team
from their previous two national championship teams.
Yet, while the Bruins are young, they have displayed veteran
character.
“Every time we go into overtime we win and show a lot of
maturity in pulling together and succeeding,” senior driver
Alfonso Tucay said. “This team plays a lot older than it
really is. Everybody has the (right) goals. They know what they
want. As a team we know what we want.”
What they want is their eighth national championship and their
third in a row. Yet the pressures of an NCAA tournament are going
to introduce new and unique elements never before seen by this
young team.
“There is going to be a tremendous amount of
energy,” head coach Adam Krikorian said. “It’s
going to be very electrifying, there’s going to be a
tremendous amount of nerves that go along with that energy and with
that electrifying feeling. I think obviously with nerves comes
pressure.”
The Bruins will likely be pressured to bring down Stanford once
and for all, something they have not done in three tries this
season.
“They’re undoubtedly the best team this year, it
wasn’t even close,” Krikorian said.
Should UCLA face Stanford, they will have to do so in hostile
territory with the national championship probably on the line.
Whether the Bruins will be ready for this weekend remains to be
seen.
“I would like to think that we’ve prepared and
focused each and every game that I think we should be ready for
this weekend,” Krikorian said. “But I don’t think
the other guys are going to have an idea what it’s going to
be like this weekend.”