UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel sympathizes with redshirt freshman quarterback Kevin Prince.
Prince faces the unhappy task of playing his first career road game against an angry and talented Tennessee squad in front of more than 100,000 of their own football-crazy SEC fans.
Neuheisel played his first-ever game as a starter against the Volunteers’ conference rival Georgia ““ and managed to produce only eight points in a 19-8 loss to the Bulldogs.
“That didn’t go well “¦” Neuheisel said.
But for Prince and the rest of the UCLA squad, the coach hopes things will go better.
In fact, he’s trying to get them excited about traveling to Knoxville, Tenn.
“Do I have a choice?” he asked rhetorically about this weekend’s road matchup. “Ready or not, here we come. We have to go and play, and I don’t want them to be nervous about it. I want them to go and play and enjoy the dang experience.”
One of the many questions is how the Bruins will handle the travel aspect of their first road game and the deafening noise that will greet them when they get there.
Neuheisel estimates that the team will bring 20 players on the plane that have never played in a road contest. Three of those 20 will be dealing with snap-count issues on the offensive line, and one will be receiving the snaps from behind center.
Both the quarterback Prince and true freshman offensive lineman Xavier Su’a-Filo admit that noise presents a problem. Yet they both said that having a week of experience under their belts will help.
“I think I’ve almost got the hang of it,” Su’a-Filo said.
“It’s definitely helpful to be 1-0 as a starter,” Prince added.
To help prepare for the noise, the coaching staff ended the last 20 minutes of practice with simulated crowd noise that the team had to play through.
“It will be a bigger portion of the practices as we get through the week,” Neuheisel said.
The Bruins will have an extra day to get over jet lag because they will depart Thursday afternoon. But an extra day to prepare can also mean an extra day for distractions.
Prince, however, said that his team is too focused for that to become a problem.
“We realize what a big opportunity this is to go into an SEC school to their place and try to walk out of there with a victory. We realize that it is a big challenge, and I don’t think anyone is going to be tempted to mess around down there.”
Su’a-Filo, for his part, seems to be buying into his coach’s optimism about the team’s trip to Tennessee.
“I’m excited,” he said. “I’ve only been to a couple games down South in that atmosphere. It’s big-time down there. Football is religion in the South. I’m excited to go check it out.”
MORE MUSICAL NOISE: Tennessee fans and the Tennessee band are famous for repeatedly playing “Rocky Top,” an official song of the state, throughout a football game.
Neuheisel said he hopes that UCLA’s play can help keep the celebrating, and the subsequent song-playing, to a minimum.
“I think they are going to play it (“Rocky Top”) an inordinate amount of times anyway, but we’d like to keep it down if at all possible,” he said.
HINTS OF USC: Both Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin and his head assistant Ed Orgeron are former USC coordinators, and the latter indicated recently that they might still dislike Bruin Blue.
As recently as last Sunday on Kiffin’s Sunday television show, Orgeron started a war of words, saying, “You will not find anybody else in the world that wants to beat UCLA more than Ed Orgeron and Lane Kiffin, so these boys better be ready.”
Neuheisel’s response?
“Those guys are good coaches,” he said. “They’ve got their way to motivate their team. We are just going to show up.”
HELD OUT OF PRACTICE: UCLA center Kai Maiava and defensive tackle Brian Price did not participate in Tuesday’s practice, but Neuheisel said both would be ready to play Saturday.
Maiava was cited as having a sore back, and Price was held out because of a bruise on his leg.