Bruin Bites: Women's Soccer Starts Title Defense, More

The football team returns from San Bernardino to continue preseason preparations. And it's a whole new world in basketball, as Prince Ali comes into TIARA's tent. Meanwhile, there is news on the non-revenue sports front as well.

--- The women's soccer team comes into the 2014-15 season ranked #1 in the preseason coaches' poll. The ACC holds down the next four spots in the initial poll- yawn. The only other Pac-12 team in the top 25 is Stanford, at #6.

The team played an exhibition match against #9 Texas A&M on Friday night at the North Athletic Field. They will move to Drake for the season opener this Friday against Maryland. In the exhibition match, UCLA won 3-1. Three goalies split the 90 minutes equally. Goals were scored by senior defender Megan Oyster (assists from senior midfielder and national team member Sam Mewis and sophomore midfielder and USA U-20 team member Lauren Kaskie), junior forward Kodi Lavrusky (who picked up where she left off with the championship winning goal against FSU) (assists from sophomore forward and Pac-12 freshman of the year Darian Jenkins and junior forward and all-Pac 12 selectionTaylor Smith) and Mewis on a PK.

Bruinette88 was in mid-season form for this contest, with updates during the match. And a season preview is in the works.

--- Current and former members of the UCLA women's water polo team are front and center in the US National Team's run for glory at the FINA World Cup in Russia. Side note- are there any international competitions in the next four years which are not being held in Russia or Brazil? Just asking. The US team opened play by smoking South Africa 18-1, with junior attacker and 1st team All-American Rachel Fattal leading the way with three goals. Junior defender and honorable mention All-American Alys Williams, and alums Courtney Mathewson, KK Clark and Jillian Krauss also scored. Redshirt senior All-American and conference player of the year Sami Hill started in goal for Team USA.

Next up for the US team was Australia, with the US winning 8-6. Rachel Fattal again led the way with two goals, and alum Courtney Mathewson added another. The final match in group play was a 15-10 shootout win over Hungary. Fattal scored twice and Mathewson again scored for Team USA. Sami Hill had 11 saves in goal.

Team USA breezed through the quarterfinals 24-0 (!!) over Singapore. Williams and Fattal scored, along with alums Jillian Kraus (two goals) and KK Clark. In the semifinals, the US beat China 11-4 to advance to the championship match. Fattal added another goal for the US, along with alums KK Clark and Mathewson. The final UCLA connection to the team is Head Coach Adam Krikorian, who was in Westwood when Doughnut arrived and added more NCAA titles to Doughnut's total than any other coach. He is missed. Go USA in the finals !

--- Finally, junior golfer Jonathan Garrick had a successful week at the US Amateur Championship in Georgia. There were two days of medal round golf (add up the total scores on every hole for each player) to determine a field of 64, followed by head-to-head match play (each hole is won or halved). Here is the leaderboard for the first two rounds.

As can be seen, Garrick tied for third (out of more than 300 golfers) with a score of -5. Fellow Bruins junior Lorens Chan and senior Matt Pinizzotto also competed, but did not make the cut for match play.

In match play, Garrick won 3 and 2 in his 1st match (details here, Garrick match is 7th row from the bottom). Next up was the round of 32, where Garrick lost 1 up. The details by hole can be found here (Garrick match is 2nd row from the bottom). All in all, a very successful week.

The next team event on campus is Men's Soccer, which opens the hopefully dry Drake field on Tuesday vs. Nebraska Omaha.

Go Bruins !! Go USA !!