On Sunday afternoon, the UCLA men’s water polo team will have a much clearer picture of what its postseason will look like, because, by then, it will have played two more conference teams. The No. 2 Bruins (22-2, 4-0 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) will take on the No. 3 Stanford Cardinal (14-4, 4-2) at home today in a matchup that will have major seeding implications for the approaching MPSF Tournament, with the Bruins controlling their own destiny to at least the No. 2 seed with a win.
Stanford is the highest-ranked opponent UCLA will play at Spieker Aquatics Center this season. While the Bruins are revved up for what they believe will be a high-intensity battle against a team they haven’t yet faced this season, they also understand the need to stay levelheaded against their talented conference rivals.
“Everyone’s excited to play one of the big four teams at home under the lights on a Friday night,” senior attacker Griffin White said. “We have to take it as any other game, prepare our personnel and do what we know how to do.”
Stanford rides a six-game win streak into the matchup, its most recent victory coming in the form of a 24-7 blowout against No. 18 Santa Clara last weekend. The Bruin squad, which has been working particularly hard on its five-on-six and transition defense in practice, will look to today’s game to gauge how much progress they have made.
“Stanford has some really good individual offensive players, and they’re a really good team so we need to focus on defense,” senior attacker Bret Lathrope said. “I can already visualize playing defense against those guys.”
But UCLA’s job this weekend will not be finished tonight. The team will head up to Stockton on Saturday to face No. 7 Pacific (11-7, 2-2) on Sunday at noon. Though the Bruins were 9-4 victors over the Tigers in their last meeting nearly two months ago, UCLA has not had a mid-weekend in-conference road trip like the one they are about to experience during coach Adam Wright’s tenure in Westwood, which might prove to be a challenge for them.
“For whatever reason, the schedule worked that way, but it’s kind of odd that we have a Friday night game then we fly out on Saturday,” Wright said. “The reality is, right now we can only worry about Stanford and then come Friday night after the game, then we can worry about (Pacific).”
Playing two conference games in a weekend for the first time all season is something that the team, who has won eight straight games, says will help in preparation for the three-day MPSF Tournament that begins two weeks from today.
“The turnaround’s pretty tough for us, so we need to rest up and stay focused,” Lathrope said.