USC 28, UCLA 14. At least I'm not ashamed

Well, as I rather suspected would happen, USC beat UCLA last night, but it was a more competitive game than the final score indicated and I wasn't ashamed of the effort. Indeed, if Jonathan Franklin hadn't fumbled shortly after a 59-yard touchdown run, the momentum would definitely have been with UCLA, and UCLA was within a play of tying the game as late as the fourth quarter. Also, the team didn't give up, scoring a meaningless touchdown (as far as the determining the winner of the game) but not necessarily meaningless when it comes to self-respect.

I want to believe Rick Neuheisel can turn things around, but the program definitely took a step backward this year. Yes, there were injuries, notably to Kevin Prince, who showed a few signs of competence before going down. I think Neuheisel is a reasonably good coach -- he certainly had success at Colorado and Washington. But you kinda wonder. He was accused of at least mildly shady recruiting practices at both schools (though what he was fired for at Washington , betting on March madness, had nothing to do with football) but has cleaned things up while serving at his alma mater. Could it be that his success before had more to do with possibly shady activities than coaching skills and now that he's following the straight-and-narrow his coaching deficiencies are being exposed? I don't know enough to have a definitive opinion, but it strikes me as a possibility.

Bruins just might win tonight

At least Register sportswriter Scott Reid seems to think so, giving the Bruins the edge in most categories and predicting a 34-17 UCLA win led by Jonathan Franklin and the ground game. I may be a little less certain. It is true that Washington, and especially Jake Locker, who almost went early to the NFL lat year, had been disappointing and inconsistent. And it's also true that UCLA seems to have regained a touch of momentum and Rick Neuheisel, even though he hasn't (yet) brought UCLA to the kind of glory we'd like to expect, has generally kept his UCLA teams improving as the season progresses.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to it, on ESPN at 5 PST. It's supposed to be cold and rainy in Washington, which I wouldn't think bodes well for a visitng team as a general rule, but might bode well for a visiting team with a solid running game. Am I expecting too little when I say I'll be content if they look respectable and as if they really came to play?

UCLA still rather inscrutable

UCLA has a bye week this week, so I probably won't write about them again until they frustrate me a little more. I thought this set of comments by the Register's sportswriter Adam Maya (whom I don't know even to recognize passing in the hall was rather insightful. Washington, Arizona and USC are still on the schedule, and if they win two of those games they will be bowl-eligible, which will be nice. The problem is they could win them all (yes, I think beating USC is not out of the question this year) or lose them all, depnending on which team shows up. Hanging in with and finally beating Oregon State was a good sign, and the offensive line may have geled. But this seems like a year for inconsistency.

Maya sees Richard Brehaut improving at QB (poor injured Kevin Prince), but wishes Norm Chow would give him more opportunities to pass when the run game isn't going all that well. I think he's got a point. Neuheisel last year was pretty good at getting the bruins to improve late in the season, so I haven't lost all hope -- or even very much.

Rivalry week underway in SoCal

Somewhere I have a book on college sports rivalries that doesn't even include UCLA-USC. Whoever wrote it must not have been in Southern California during the week the two schools meet for football. Those with an actual connection to one or the other school -- I attended UCLA off and on '61-'67, didn't get a degree but learned a lot -- get a little crazy, and locals without a real tie tend to choose up sides as well. During the 1960s -- Zeno, Beban, Prothro, O.J., John McKay -- you really could throw the record away -- it was going to be a tough, hard-fought game decided at the end. Maybe it's not a "great" rivalry because it goes through periods of one-sidedness -- UCLA has won only once during the Pete Carroll era, a win that shocked everybody.

This year I'm trying not to set myself up, but I'm hardly the only one who thinks UCLA has a solid chance. At USC, losing 8 defensemen to the first two rounds of the NFL draft and having a true freshman querterback finally took their toll, most recently in those embarrassing losses to Oregon and Stanford. They had a bye week last weekend and I'm sure Carroll will have them prepared to see beating the Bruins as redemption, and they probably have the raw talent to do it, if Barkley is on.

However, after a miserable middle with 5 Pac-10 losses, the Bruins have regrouped and won their last three games. I'm still concerned that we can't seem to score a touchdown in the red zone -- the two touchdowns against Arizona State both came from defensive takeaways -- but the defense is playing very well, and Prince at least seems able to get the offense within field goal range. We're remembering the Neuheisel has built winners wherever he has coached. I'm wearing the colors all week and looking forward to a good game.

Waiting for the Bruins

I can hardly believe I am actually impatient for the first UCLA football game tomorrow at 5 PDT. Good sense suggests lowered expectations: the two quarterbacks who started games last year are out with injuries and the starter is a JC transfer who wasn't with the team last year. Of five Register sportswriters, two picked UCLA to finish 6th, two 7th and one 8th. UCLA is in a rebuilding year and has the toughest overall schedule in the Pac 10 -- 6 of 10 games against top-25 teams. Only two of the offensive line starters played so much as a down last year.

And yet . . . the defense appears to be solid. Norm Chow is an excellent offensive coordinator (and would probably like to show up USC where he had success before but seems to have been dissed) and Rick Neuheisel has been successful as head coach wherever he has gone. Besides quarterback the "skill" players (though don't ever tell me offensive linemen don't need skill, especially when they're undersized runts as I was) seem to be pretty solid.

Anyway, chips, beer and guacamole are stocked up, so I'm ready.

Football begins

I don't know whether to look forward to the UCLA football season, which begins Saturday at 5 PDT against Tennessee on ESPN, with anticipation and trepidation. Things should certainly be different eventually with Rick Neuheisel as coach, but Ben Olsen, penciled in as starting quarterback, has already gone down with an injury (8-10 more weeks) and Kevin Craft, a transfer, is an unknown quantity. The offensive line, the heart of any good football team, is mostly new and untested. And quite frankly, there are valid doubts about the overall talent level on this team.

But despite problems at other schools where he has coached -- though the fact that he put a big bet into an NCAA basketball tournament pool while coaching football was pretty bogus as an ethical problem and I think he got a settlement from U. of Washington after they fired him over it -- he has been successful as a coach wherever he has gone, and he's an old (1984 Rose Bowl MVP, which makes him a youngster by my lights) Bruin player. I suspect there will be a certain amount of "wait until next year" this season, but I'm hoping against hope that it will be better than that.

UCLA football could be great

A commenter noted that UCLA is looking as if it has good potential as a football school, with Rick Neuheisel as head coach. And he talked DeWayne Walker into staying as defensive coordinator and got Norm Chow (!) as offensive coordinator. I haven't yet allowed myself to consider the possibilities too heavily for fear of hurting myself in the excitement. It often takes a new coach a year or two to establish himself, but I can see the Bruins being pretty formidable this year. They had some good games last year but had a tendency to play to the level of the competition and lost games they should have won. I don't think Neuheisel/Walker/Chow will let that happen very often.