Coach Rick Neuheisel held his weekly, Sunday teleconference this evening and delivered a piece of bad news for the UCLA quarterback situation.
Redshirt junior Kevin Prince, who suffered a mild concussion in Saturday’s loss to Houston, also sprained the AC joint in his right shoulder on the same play.
While he is no longer showing signs of the concussion, the sprain could keep him out of Saturday’s home opener against San Jose State. Neuheisel said Prince is listed as day-to-day and his status for Saturday’s game would be based on how much he can practice this week.
“When he’s ready to go, we’ll get him back into the action,” Neuheisel said. “We’ll have to wait and see when that is.”
You can bet the training staff will be extra careful with Prince based on two main factors. One: Brehaut is definitely capable of managing the offense against the Spartans, who gave up 57 points to Andrew Luck and Stanford on Saturday and didn’t beat an FBS opponent last season.
Two: Prince tried to come back from a knee injury too soon last season and got burned for it. He tore cartilage in his right knee against Texas, sat out the Washington State game and rushed back for a loss to Cal. He would go on to miss the remaining six games of the season after having micro-fracture surgery.
Junior Richard Brehaut would be the starter if Prince can’t go, with freshman Brett Hundley stepping into the backup role.
Other notes from the teleconference
—After looking at the film this morning, Neuheisel identified some of the lapses on defense.
“We didn’t tackle as well as we needed to,” he said. “We lost a little discipline and came out of our zones and our gaps and when you do that, you leave yourselves vulnerable.”
—Redshirt senior linebacker Glenn Love has a dislocated shoulder and will miss “a couple” of weeks, according to Neuheisel.
—Asked if the SJSU game comes at a good time for his team, Neuheisel took the high road.
“It’s the next one on the schedule. We just play them as they come. We’re excited to play, it makes no difference as to who it is.”
He may have let slip Saturday when he was asked another scheduling question. Oregon State v. Sacramento State and Stanford v. SJSU were brought up as examples of easy games for Pac-12 teams.
“You play the games as they come,” Neuheisel said Saturday. “We found out a lot about ourselves today. I don’t know that you find out a lot about yourself playing the other opponents.”