St. Francis and UCLA were in a close game for one quarter, where the Bruins held a 2-1 lead. The second quarter is where UCLA easily pulled away by outscoring St. Francis 5-0, and they were never able to recover from that. In the second half UCLA continued their offensive attack by outscoring St. Francis 10-2.
This game was not even close, and it shows how much that the young St. Francis team needs to grow and improve to be able to compete with the super-elite teams.
St. Francis head coach Igor Samardzija mentioned his teams second quarter woes, as well as what they need to do to get better:
The offense didn't work. It got stagnant and we didn't stick to the game plan. I think since we are such a young team, we just got overwhelmed."
[...]
"We need to continue recruiting and getting better players. We need to open the season strong. Obviously it is important for us to finish the season on a high note, but we need to get used to winning from the beginning. We need to break into the top 10 and then go and play top four teams.
Not playing as many top teams throughout the year was a reason why St. Francis fell behind in the second quarter and beyond. They were just not able to recover and UCLA took advantage of that and kept pilling on the goals to easily win their semifinal game.
UCLA was led by Griffin White who led all scorers with four goals.