Beach stumbles against No. 1 UCLA

Men's Waterpolo

The Long Beach State men's water polo team fell to No. 1-ranked UCLA Sunday in a disappointing 16-7 loss.

The win stretched The Bruins' (17-2 overall, 7-0 Mount Pacific Sports Federation) winning streak to 14, and was the 49ers' (13-8, 2-2 MPSF) second loss to UCLA this season.

"UCLA truly is a very good team," 49er Head Coach Rick Azevedo said. "They seemed to play with a lot of emotion today."

The Bruins' scoring was led by senior Sean Kern with four goals, followed by sophomore Matt Flesher with three.

"We didn't necessarily play bad," Azevedo said. "At this point I think they just played better than we did."

The Bruin starters scored three times before 49er Nathan Allard tallied one for The Beach with 27 seconds remaining in the first.

Unfortunately, the home team was not finished as Kern scored with six seconds left to end the period with UCLA leading 4-1.

Shortly after Kern opened the period with another goal for the Bruins, 49er Bryce Felloney scored the second goal for LBSU, bringing the score to 5-2.

With 2:25 to go, Bruin Andy Bailey stretched the lead to 4, until LBSU junior Aaron Holloway capitalized on a six-on-five situation to score the third goal for The Beach.   UCLA returned to score with a lob over 49er goalie Rob Smith's head to end the first half 7-3.

The third period proved to be the highest scoring period of the game with five for UCLA and four for The Beach.

Despite great player efforts The Beach was unable to narrow the deficit as the period ended with UCLA leading 12-7.

In the last period the Bruins held the 49ers scoreless.   UCLA extended its lead with four more goals to end the game with a 16-7 win.

Although the scoreboard did not reflect it, LBSU played very well with only a few mistakes against a very strong team, Azevedo said.

Scoring for LBSU was  Holloway with two and Adam Collins, Felloney, Justin Jewell, Allard and Scott Miller with one goal each.

The Beach will be back in action Tuesday for a rematch against UC Irvine. The MPSF game will be played at Los Alamitos Naval Base at 7 p.m.