#2 UCLA Men’s Water Polo Returns Home to Face #17 Cal Baptist

The past two weekends UCLA has played close games against Top Ten opponents. Two weeks ago, the Bruins lost their first game of the season to UC Irvine 9-8. Last weekend, UCLA edged Pepperdine 8-7.

Max Irving got the Bruins on the board first with 5:36 left in the first quarter. Just over a minute later, Chasen Travisano scored the first of his three goals to give UCLA a 2-0 lead. Pepperdine’s Mate Toth cut the Bruins’ lead to one with 1:11 left, but just 17 seconds later, Irving scored his second goal of the game, giving UCLA a 3-1 lead. Travisano made it 4-1 with his second goal with just 24 seconds left in the first.

Less than a minute into the second quarter, Pepperdine’s Coleman Carpenter scored to make it 4-2, Bruins. Alex Roelse got the Bruins’ lead back to three when he scored with just under six minutes to go in the half. Marko Asic’s power play goal with 3:36 to go made it 5-3. UCLA re-took a three-goal lead less than 30 seconds later when Evan Rosenfeld scored, but Asic cut that lead back to two with less than 2 minutes to go. The final goal of the half came with 1:21 left when Nicolas Saveljic scored to give the Bruins a 7-4 lead at the half.

After the break, Travisano finished off his hat trick with his third goal with 6:44 left in the third. The only other goal in the quarter was scored by Mark Urban for the Waves and it was 8-5 after three.

The fourth quarter was all-Pepperdine as the Waves’ Christopher Dilworth scored to make it 8-6 with 5:09 left in the game. Urban’s second goal with 1:21 left cut the Bruins’ lead to just one, but UCLA held defensively after that and the final was 8-7.

Tonight, they play the first of this weekend’s two home games when they host #17 Cal Baptist. It should be a relatively easy game for the Bruins as long as they don’t look past the Lancers toward tomorrow night’s game against #7 Long Beach State.


Go Bruins!!!