UCLA Women’s Water Polo Returns Home to Face San Jose State

The UCLA Women’s Water Polo team plays its second MPSF game of the season today. It’s also the Bruins’ first home game since the first game of the season back on January 13th.

Considering that, you could conclude that UCLA’s 16-3 record since they defeated Loyola Marymount at home is actually pretty good considering that all of those games were either road or neutral site games. At the same time, not all is well for the Bruins at this point.

That’s because UCLA has lost to MPSF and Pac-12 rivals Southern Cal, Stanford and UC Berkeley. That doesn’t bode well for making the NCAA Tournament due to a limited number of at-large bids and UCLA may need to win the MPSF Tournament just to make the NCAA Tournament.

That actually makes today’s game against San Jose State important because it’s an MPSF game. UCLA should be able to win today’s game easily because the Spartans don’t appear to be a very good team even though they are ranked 21st in this week’s CWPA Poll. The Bruins can’t risk a loss today. They need to come out and crush the Spartans today to make a statement after losing last weekend’s MPSF opener to UC Berkeley, 5-3.

Speaking of last weekend, after losing to the Golden Bears on Saturday, UCLA traveled to Pacific on Sunday, where they defeated the Tigers, 12-8.

Against the Bears, the Bruins led 3-2 at halftime with goals from Devin Grab, Lexi Liebowitz and Lizette Rozeboom, but were held scoreless in the second half while Berkeley managed to score three third period goals to win the game.

Then, against the Tigers, UCLA got a hat trick from Rozeboom and two goals each from Grab, Bronte Halligan, Liebowitz and Maddie Musselman. Myrna Simmons also scored for the Bruins.

UCLA scored the first four goals of the game with three in the first quarter and the first goal of the second quarter. After Pacific cut the Bruins’ lead to 4-1, Rozeboom took over and scored all three of her goals consecutively to give UCLA a 7-1 lead. The Tigers would add one more goal in the quarter and UCLA led 7-2 at the break.

Each team scored four times in the third and UCLA led 11-6 after three. In the fourth quarter, after Musselman made it 12-6, the Tigers managed to score two more goals, but it was too little, too late and the Bruins came home with a 12-8 win.

In addition to being a home game, today’s game will also be televised on Pac-12 Network Los Angeles with Greg Mescall on the call.

This is your UCLA vs. San Jose State women’s water polo open thread.


Go Bruins!!!