Though it was never really a dream, the UCLA football season
might have just become a nightmare.
All it took was 60 minutes of football on Saturday for a season
that still held some promise to transform into a season of palpable
disappointment.
A win would have made the Bruins eligible for a bowl game, but
they didn’t make any plays early, didn’t make a key
play late, made countless blunders and suffered key injuries in
between during the 31-29 loss to lowly Washington State at the Rose
Bowl.
“That was not a very good performance, period,”
coach Karl Dorrell said.
That much was obvious.
Even from the outset, when UCLA receiver Tab Perry fumbled the
kickoff to set up a Cougar touchdown on their first play from
scrimmage, it looked like the Bruins were in for a long day. But
explaining why UCLA (5-4, 3-3 Pac-10) lost to a struggling Cougar
team that had lost four in a row prior to Saturday isn’t as
simple as one fumble.
The explanation requires all of the usual suspects ““ lack
of focus early, poor rush defense, deplorable tackling, bad
turnovers, and costly injuries. When something could have gone
wrong Saturday, it usually did.
And it all started with the slow start. After Washington State
running back Jerome Harrison scored the first of his three
touchdowns in the game of his career to put the Cougars (4-5, 2-4)
up 7-0, the Bruin defense answered back with a touchdown of its own
on Brigham Harwell’s fumble recovery in the endzone. But the
offense couldn’t get anything going in the entire first half,
and it wasn’t until the fourth quarter that UCLA scored an
offensive touchdown.
“We just came out flat today,” said quarterback Drew
Olson, who finished 18-for-38 for 201 yards, two touchdowns, and
one interception. “It wasn’t the same offense in the
first half.”
Trailing 21-10 at the half, the UCLA offense had only four first
downs and 90 yards. Olson said afterward that they were bothered by
the Cougars’ man blitz, but other people had a different
explanation.
“It’s just a shame,” offensive coordinator Tom
Cable said. “It’s a real shame that we would come out
and play with that little emotion and attention to detail and lack
of concentration and effort.”
Cable said he was completely shocked to see the Bruins come out
and play the way they did, especially after they had seemingly
turned the corner last weekend with a dominating 21-0 victory over
Stanford.
“We have to work and realize that when you’re
becoming a good football team, you take nothing for granted,”
he said. “Every game is big. Every team in this league is
good. I don’t care who they are. Just because you win a game
and get a shutout and all that, you can’t get full of
yourself because when you do, this is what happens to
you.”
And it’s certainly not just the offense that deserves the
blame. After the UCLA defense played by far its best game of the
season against Stanford, the same demons that have plagued the
Bruins reappeared Saturday. The defensive line couldn’t
control the line of scrimmage, and missed tackle after missed
tackle allowed Harrison to finish with 247 yards on 42 carries.
“It’s definitely a lack of focus,” safety
Jarrad Page said. “No team should make plays on us like that.
We need to be there, we need to be in the right spots and make
those plays. They shouldn’t get it that easy.”
Harrison scored on runs of 25 yards and 45 yards in the first
quarter, and Washington State scored its other first half touchdown
when freshman quarterback Alex Brink hooked up with receiver Jason
Hill on an 18-yard touchdown. The Cougars finished the game with
506 yards of total offense.
“You never anticipate not playing as well as you’re
capable of, especially tackling,” defensive coordinator Larry
Kerr said.
“It just changes the whole football game. If you can
tackle, you have a chance, and that’s the one glaring thing I
saw.”
In addition to playing poorly on both sides of the ball, UCLA
lost two of its most dangerous offensive weapons in the first half.
Tailback Maurice Drew came out of the game and didn’t return
after spraining his ankle on a punt return in the first quarter.
Tight end Marcedes Lewis left the game after bruising his tailbone
on an acrobatic catch in the second quarter.
“Words can’t explain how frustrated I was,”
Lewis said. “I need to be out there to help my teammates. I
need to be out there on the field.
“It would make it that much easier to try and pull this
thing out. I tried to do everything I could to come back in the
second half, but I just couldn’t do it.”
Though UCLA got some offense going in the fourth quarter, not
having Drew and Lewis clearly hurt the team’s chances.
“It was definitely tough because Maurice and Marcedes are
two of our top players,” said receiver Craig Bragg, who broke
UCLA’s all-time receptions mark with five receptions
Saturday, giving him 180 for his career. “It’s tough
when you lose guys like that. I think we did a good job stepping
up, but there’s no way you can replace guys like
that.”
But even with all of that, the Bruins had a chance. Even with
Perry’s fumble, Olson’s interception, the offensive and
defensive inadequacies, and the injuries, UCLA had a chance to tie
the game and send it to overtime.
That was because kicker Justin Medlock was a perfect 3-for-3 on
the day, Perry scored on a 47-yard touchdown reception early in the
fourth quarter, and tailback Manuel White made an incredible
one-handed touchdown catch with less than a minute to play on a
ball Olson later said wasn’t even thrown to him.
At that point, UCLA could have tied the game with a two-point
conversion.
But it wasn’t meant to be, as Olson rolled right, looked
for Bragg, then Perry, then to run, before finally throwing it
across his body to the other side of the field. The ball landed
incomplete, and the Bruins’ fate was effectively sealed.
There were just too many mistakes to overcome.
“We didn’t tackle well,” Dorrell said.
“We didn’t block well. There were just a lot of things
we didn’t do well. The effort was there. We just didn’t
make the plays.
“We were just ineffective on both sides of the
ball.”
And when a team is ineffective on both sides of the ball,
it’s very difficult to win games. That’s not a
nightmare ““ it’s the truth.