Coming to haunt the No. 2 UCLA men’s water polo team this Halloween weekend is the spooky specter of anteaters.

But seriously, UCLA (9-6, 1-3 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) cannot take No. 5 UC Irvine (11-6, 2-2 MPSF) lightly because another MPSF loss could make the Bruins’ status scary.

After back-to-back excruciating two-goal losses to No. 1 Stanford, the Bruins must regroup and focus on Saturday because their match with UC Irvine may be the most meaningful game of their season.

“This game is too important,” head coach Adam Krikorian said. “It’s an MPSF game and any more of those losses might force us to win the conference tournament to go to the NCAA’s.”

That route is as favorable to the team as a trip to Transylvania, but to avoid it, the Bruins better be ready for a battle. UCLA has already split two very physical matches this year against the Anteaters, but actually trails in the all-time series 49-57-1.

“With UC Irvine what you see is what you get,” Coach Krikorian said. “Their strengths are their size and speed. They are defensively aggressive in denying the ball and with their press. They play extremely physical in order to try to take you out of your game. Their weakness, though, is their depth. They can’t go as deep as us so we need to make it a game of conditioning.”

The Anteaters feature two of the best center forwards in the country – senior Jeff Powers and sophomore Dreason Berry. The two are the MPSF’s third and fourth leading scorers. Hence, it will be another tiring week for Bruin junior driver Albert Garcia who admirably dealt with Stanford top scorer Tony Azevedo the past two weeks, shutting him out in the first match between the schools.

“The games against Irvine are usually similar,” said sophomore driver Brett Ormsby, the reigning MPSF Player of the Week. “They have a couple of strong scorers so we need to deny the ball there. We also need to counterattack because we’re a better swimming team.”

Though the regular season is coming to an end, Coach Krikorian still believes his squad has yet to perform up to its capabilities. To elevate their play, he has been focusing on the team’s power play offense.

“In practice we have been emphasizing our six-on-five because our conversion percentage with a man advantage is only 36 percent, and we’d like to be around 50 percent.”

If the Bruins can improve their power play and finally hit their elusive peak offensively, they will be in good position to vanquish the anteaters.