UCLA Selected as No. 2 Seed for NCAA Championship
November 21, 2016 | Men's Water Polo
The Bruins will head to Berkeley, Calif., seeking their third-consecutive NCAA Championship.
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LOS ANGELES – The UCLA men's water polo team will seek to defend its back-to-back NCAA National Championships at the 2016 NCAA Championship in Berkeley, Calif., on Dec 3-4 as the Bruins were selected as the No. 2 seed. With a 25-2 overall record, the Bruins are seeking their 11th NCAA title and third in a row.
Five teams earned automatic selection to this year's NCAA Championships by winning their respective conference tournaments. The other two teams were selected based on at-large criteria and that resulted in UCLA and California earning at-large bids.
The Bruins are set up with an NCAA semifinal slot and will face the winner of California (20-4) and Pomona-Pitzer Colleges (21-8), which will square off in a play-in game on Dec. 1 (time TBA). That semifinal will take place on Dec. 3 at 5:12 p.m. PT at Spieker Aquatics Complex in Berkeley. The 2016 national championship game will be held at 3 p.m. PT on December 4.
In the opposite NCAA semifinal is top-seeded USC, which has been dealt back-to-back losses by the Bruins in their last two NCAA Championship meetings, including last year's 10-7 victory for the program's 10th NCAA Championship and UCLA's 113th overall, which leads the nation. The rest of the field is comprised of conference champions Harvard (Northeast Water Polo Conference), Bucknell (Collegiate Water Polo Association), UC Davis (Western Water Polo Association) and Pomona-Pitzer (Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference).
In the first play-in game, Harvard (24-6) will host Bucknell (23-4) on Nov. 26. The winner will advance to the second play-in game on Dec. 1 to play UC Davis (23-5), with the winner advancing to the championship bracket to play USC in Berkeley on Dec. 3
The Bruins have defeated both of the teams on its side of the bracket this year, posting an 18-7 win over Pomona-Pitzer in the first round of the Mountain Pacific Invitational on Sept. 23, and defeating the Golden Bears three times. UCLA defeated Cal 10-7 in the title game of the Mountain Pacific Invitational in Berkeley on Sept. 25, then posted a 7-6 win at Cal in MPSF play and finally a thrilling 11-10 overtime win in an MPSF Tournament semifinal game at UCLA on Nov. 18.
Start times for play-in games have yet to be announced. The national semifinals set for Dec. 3 are scheduled for 3 p.m. (PT) and 5:12 p.m. while the national championship match on Dec. 4 will begin at 3 p.m. All three matches will be streamed live on NCAA.com.
