PASADENA “”mdash; The 2010 UCLA football season can perhaps be memorialized with a singular image: a cartoon; maybe it’s a man who, despite having a noose around his neck, is still alive. Maybe there’s an empty cigar box laying at his feet.
Failure to execute.
Close, but no cigar.
To cap off a disappointing season filled with near-triumphs, troubling miscues and missed opportunities, UCLA suffered all of the above in a mistake-laden 28-14 loss to USC that was an eerie reflection of the Bruins’ year as a whole.
Seeking any measure of pride to atone for a campaign that ends short of the postseason, the Bruins had the right amount of emotion, the wrong level of execution. Three-and-outs on their first two possessions ending up being pleasant memories by the game’s end.
With the score tied at 7-7, UCLA went on the march deep into USC territory, eventually garnering a first down at the Trojan 24-yard line. That’s when the sloppiness broke through the veil with a holding penalty, a false start and a costly fumble by redshirt sophomore running back Johnathan Franklin, who just minutes before had dazzled the Rose Bowl crowd with a 59-yard touchdown run.
But this time it was USC’s Malcolm Smith prancing down the sideline, as he took Franklin’s fumble 68 yards the other way for a backbreaking score that UCLA never recovered from.
“In a big game, you give up a big fumble, and the game turns around,” Franklin said.
Maybe each quarterback was befuddled by the fact that both teams were wearing their home uniforms, but the second half featured turnovers at a basketball-like rate. UCLA sophomore quarterback Richard Brehaut was dreaming too big on a deep fade that was intercepted. Then, after junior safety Tony Dye picked off USC quarterback Matt Barkley to give the Bruins the ball back, the right-handed Brehaut tried to run an option play to his left. The quarterback’s pitch got to freshman F-back Anthony Barr right about the same time as a USC defender did, the ball was jarred loose, and the Trojans pounced on yet another Bruin giveaway.
“We had a lot of opportunities that we didn’t take advantage of,” Brehaut said. “We just couldn’t execute.”
That seemed to be the story of the year for the Bruins, who often followed electrifying highlights with bone-headed blunders. For every flea-flicker that resulted in a long touchdown pass, there was an option-left that yielded little.
“We’ve seen that we’re capable of making plays, but shoot, we’ve just got to finish,” junior wide receiver Taylor Embree said.
Embree had a golden chance to make things interesting late in the fourth quarter, when Brehaut threw him the ball into the corner of the endzone on a fourth-down play. But the junior was unable to hang onto the pass, and a play that was initially called a touchdown by the public address announcer was just another dropped opportunity.
“With a 4-8 season, there’s lots of things we could have done better,” Brehaut said.
Who knows if the Bruins will end up second-guessing the calls that led to the mistakes.
In hindsight, maybe there is no deep fade. Maybe there is no option-left. Then again, for a reeling team trying to generate any semblance of momentum heading into the offseason, maybe there was no option left.
The last game of a season will likely be the freshest in peoples’ minds, and the mistakes of this one will illuminate the problems of a head-scratching year.