Even as the competition heats up for the Bruins, their loss column continues to collect dust.
No. 1 UCLA men’s water polo (8-0) continued its undefeated start to the 2026 campaign, earning a 16-14 road victory over No. 13 UC Irvine (7-3) on Friday at the Anteater Aquatics Complex in Irvine. The Bruins rounded out the weekend with their home debut at Spieker Aquatics Center on Saturday as part of the UCLA Mini Invite, collecting a 13-9 win over No. 14 UC Santa Barbara (11-5) and a 24-12 victory over No. 15 Loyola Marymount (4-2).
UCLA entered halftime against the Anteaters with a commanding 9-4 lead, having held Irvine scoreless for over 11 minutes after a shaky start that saw the opposing squad take the lead twice.
However, Irvine outscored UCLA with five goals in each of the third and fourth quarters, bringing them within two goals of UCLA in the last four minutes. The Bruins’ top scorer from last season, junior attacker Ryder Dodd, netted two late goals that were instrumental in maintaining the squad’s two-goal cushion of victory.
Junior utility Peter Castillo’s six earned exclusions provided nearly half of the team’s 11 key power plays, from which eight of the squad’s 16 goals were scored.
Senior goalkeeper Nate Tauscher, UCLA’s number one option in the cage in 2025, played his first minutes of the season against Irvine, making 7 saves and conceding four goals in the first half. Throughout the trio of games, most of the time in goal was split between Tauscher and sophomore goalkeeper Harper Gardner.
“We are giving as much opportunity as we can to the goalies for them to demonstrate that they can give us that growth that’s needed,” said coach Adam Wright. “We have a core of goalies that are great, but who is going to be the most consistent one is what we are trying to figure out.”
Both keepers performed similarly across the weekend’s games, with Tauscher maintaining a mark of 2.4 goals conceded per quarter that slightly edged out Gardner’s 2.83 figure. Junior goalkeeper Nick Tovani also made his season debut in the fourth quarter against LMU.
In their first game Saturday, the Bruins came firing right off the bat against the Gauchos, putting away five unanswered goals in the first quarter en route to their first first-quarter shutout of the season. A strong second quarter put UCLA in pole position at the halftime break with a 9-3 advantage.
“Yesterday we did not come out the way we wanted to, and today we did,” said fifth-year defender Jack Merrill. “It showed in the first two quarters how we grew that lead and were able to put them away.”
Despite a stronger showing from Santa Barbara in the second half, the Bruins maintained a more comfortable lead, with the Gauchos only drawing within four with 19 seconds remaining in the contest.
Wright notably took Saturday’s games as an opportunity to experiment with different tactical set-ups, including a multitude of aggressive seven-on-six formations. With both Dodd and Castillo donning the 1D goalie cap for different formations, UCLA’s flurry of changes even confused referees on the sidelines.
“Focusing on our details is really important for this team, because we have a lot of new guys, and we need to find that cohesion between each other,” senior utility Ben Liechty said.
The Bruins’ strongest scoring performance of the weekend came with a season-high 24 goals against LMU. Merrill and freshman utility Luka Gladović led the charge with four goals each, meeting and beating their season-highs, respectively.
Despite a narrow 5-4 scoreline at the end of the first quarter, a 14-goal second-half performance from Wright’s group put the game firmly out of reach for the Lions and erased any doubts.
One of the weekend’s standout performers was Liechty, who has provided the second-most goals of any Bruin this season with 15. However, it was his role as a creator rather than a scorer that stood out, earning five assists in each of the three games.
“Ben’s greatest strength is how he sees the pool. For me, those assists carry more weight than scoring,” said coach Adam Wright. “He is, without a doubt, one of the best players in the country, and, without a doubt, one of the best passers.”
Liechty, who led the conference with 63 assists in 2025, is well on the way to putting up similar numbers this year with 23 assists through his first eight games.
UCLA will next take the pool on Friday for the Overnght MPSF Invitational at Avery Aquatic Center in Stanford, where they will get their first taste of action against some of the country’s other top squads.
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