The Bruins’ win Sunday snapped a three-recreation losing streak against the Golden Bears.
It additionally snapped the streak of tournaments that made up most of the people of No. 4 UCLA women’s water polo’s (17-3, 1-0 MPSF) nonconference schedule, which meant moving its method in guidance from tournaments to unmarried-sport opposition.
“The pleasant component approximately a unmarried-game weekend is that you could just attention on that crew,” stated junior attacker Bronte Halligan. “(Coach Adam Wright) and the training group of workers group positioned in the work to make certain we have been prepared, and we have been and it confirmed.”
UCLA scored five times inside the first 1/2 earlier than No. 3 Cal (10-three, zero-1) were given its first goal mins before halftime in their second meeting of the season.
The first meeting, though, changed into the complete opposite.
Cal pitched a shutout in opposition to UCLA the entire first half whilst scoring four desires of its very own Feb. 24. The loss became additionally the Bruins’ first and simplest time beyond regulation one this season, and the Bears got here out on pinnacle ultimately.
UCLA played both No. 7 Michigan and No. 2 Stanford the day earlier than. The Bruins dropped 15 dreams at the Wolverines within the win however had to turn around and go up against the Cardinal later that day, scoring simply four times en course to a loss.
The Bruins’ three losses have all come from the final tournaments they regarded in.
The Triton Invitational brought UCLA its first lack of the season against No. 1 USC, and then the Barbara Kalbus Invitational resulted inside the Bruins’ first and handiest lower back-to-again losses of the season so far.
Freshman attacker Bella Baia stated gambling in tournaments isn’t constantly smooth and that fatigue become a aspect in the first matchup towards Cal.
“It changed into a lot of what we noticed last week, so we were very organized,” Baia stated. “We studied plenty of their plays and their dispositions, and manifestly it’s less complicated to do this for one group rather than 4 or five teams.”
Preparation ties into consistency and development – the two factors of the game Wright stated he addresses after every week.
“If we’re going to be critical about the crew that we in the end need to turn out to be, then we’ve so that it will deal with one sport at a time,” Wright stated.
UCLA will not have any more tournaments until the convention championships and the NCAA championships in April and May, respectively.
Wright said he believes the Bruins are fortunate to compete in opposition to the type of competition they’ve played in both tournaments and conference play. He also said that in order for UCLA to be where they need to be at the cease of the season, its recreation has to be steady in each formats.
“It’s less complicated as an entire to simply fear approximately one group, but the reality is that we’ve got if you want to do both,” Wright said. “There’s going to be a time and area in which we must put together for more than one groups, however this week it became super the manner the group simply targeted in on Cal.”
