EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Junior goalkeeper
Brandon Brooks helped the No. 2 Bruins by keeping
balls out of the net throughout the season.
By Eric Perez
Daily Bruin Contributor
When a team loses six out of seven possible starters, that would
suggest a rebuilding year.
That wasn’t so for the UCLA men’s water polo
team.
Except for an 8-5 loss to Stanford in the NCAA championship
game, it was business as usual for the Bruins, who entered the
season as the two-time defending national champions.
“It’s a tremendous accomplishment for this
team,” head coach Adam Krikorian said during an NCAA Final
Four press conference. “I guarantee if you poll 400 people in
U.S. water polo that watch, I’d say 99 percent of them would
say we wouldn’t have been here.”
Despite being disregarded as too young, the Bruins (16-5, 7-1
Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) proved consistently that they
were the second-best team in the country. This could not have
happened without some players stepping up.
Senior two-meter attacker Alfonso Tucay was selected onto the
All-MPSF’s first team. Freshman driver Brett Ormsby, junior
goalkeeper Brandon Brooks, junior two-meter defense Matt Flesher
and senior driver Jeff Pflueger made the second team while
sophomore driver Albert Garcia made honorable mention.
The Bruins rolled early in the season, blowing away UC Irvine
12-2 in the season opener, then notching three more wins against
Long Beach State, Loyola Marymount and the University of
Pacific.
This set the stage for the first of four show-downs against
Stanford. In a packed Sunset Canyon Rec Center, the game featured
both school bands, and chaos almost ensued when fans tried to throw
the Stanford mascot into the pool. Eventually, UCLA fell to the
Cardinal 10-6.
“We played with lots of emotion, lots of heart,”
junior goalie Brandon Brooks said after the game. “But as far
as tactically, we made a few mistakes and it cost us a few
goals.”
The Bruins brushed themselves off and continued to roll
defeating rival USC 7-5, the first of three victories against the
Trojans.
The Bruins placed in second at the NorCal tournament in
Stanford. The tournament featured all the top ten teams in the
country.
In keeping in the running for an NCAA Final Four bid, the Bruins
squared off with then No. 3 Pepperdine. The Bruins were less than
80 seconds from losing, before they battled back with two Ormsby
goals to beat the Waves 8-7.
“It was a good game, hard fought, everything we expected
it to be,” said Ormsby, who scored a hat-trick that
afternoon. “All along we knew that the winner of this game
set themselves nicely for the NCAA tournament.”
The Bruins ran the table for the rest of the regular season.
Then, after placing third in the MPSF conference tournament, the
Bruins received the at-large bid to the NCAA Final Four.
That’s where after a win against LMU, UCLA’s quest for
their third straight national championship was halted by the
Cardinal.
The 2001 UCLA men’s water polo team continuously improved
its toughness and chemistry, becoming over the course of the season
a more unified team ““ a team to watch for in 2002.