UCLA Men’s Water Polo Hosts San Jose State This Afternoon

Today might be UCLA’s lowest key game of the season. It’s not just because they are playing the 4-5 San Jose State Spartans, although that certainly contributes to it.

It’s because there is literally no coverage of today’s game. There’s no TV, no audio, no live stream and no live stats. I really don’t understand why a lot of UCLA’s home games don’t at least have their stats on TheFosh.net. That should be the least the Athletic Department does given the fact that UCLA is now a Water Polo school.

Last Time Out

On Sunday, the Bruins topped UC Davis, 12-8. This game was more competitive than expected. After a quarter, the teams were tied with three goals each. Even more surprising was the fact that the Aggies had a 2-0 lead at the midway point in the first. Right after that point, Felix Brozyna-Vilim finally got the Bruins on the board with 3:59 to go. But, the Aggies made it 3-1 before Peter Lovas scored the second UCLA goal with 3:26 left. Jake Cavano’s power play goal with 1:14 to go tied it up for the Bruins.

That momentum carried into the second quarter as UCLA took a 4-3 lead when David Stiling found the net with 4:54 left in the half while Quentin Osborne scored the Bruins’ fourth straight goal with 3:21 to go to make it 5-3, UCLA. In the final three minutes of the half, the team’s traded goals with UC Davis scoring first. Austin Rone and Ashworth Molthen added goals for the Bruins and gave UCLA a 7-5 lead at halftime.

The Aggies came out fighting in the second half and cut the lead to just a point, but Brozyna-Vilim’s second goal of the game made it 8-6. With 4:43 left in the quarter, Lovas scored the eventual game-winner when he gave UCLA a 9-6 edge. Osborne’s second goal of the game pushed the Bruin lead to 10-6 with 2:12 left. UC Davis would add one more goal in the third quarter to cut the UCLA back to three, 10-7.

The fourth quarter was the lowest scoring of the game. It wasn’t until the 4:43 mark that Molthen added his second goal of the game after he missed a penalty shot. Less than a minute later, Cavano’s second goal gave UCLA a 12-7 lead. From that point, the Aggies could only muster one more goal and the final was Bruins 12, Aggies 8.

San Jose State Spartans

Despite being ranked 16th in the country, this Spartan team just isn’t very good. They’ve lost to UC Davis, Cal Baptist, UC Berkeley, Stanford and UC Santa Barbara and the Cal Baptist game was the only close one of the bunch. The Golden Bears beat them 22-1 two weeks ago.

Outlook

Now, the Bruins may not beat them as badly as UC Berkeley did, but this game should be a pretty easy win for the Bruins. I’d expect head coach Adam Wright to use this game partly as a tune-up prior to next week’s MPSF Invitational at Stanford and partly as an opportunity to get some of his guys some game experience.

I’d be shocked if the game-winning goal isn’t scored by halftime.

This is your UCLA Men’s Water Polo vs. San Jose State open thread.


Go Bruins!!!