Much has changed since UCLA last traveled to Salt Lake City in 2011. The game two years ago was one of the few in UCLA football history to be played in a snowstorm, as temperatures hovered around freezing at kickoff and blanketed the field with snow for much of the first half. Coach Rick Neuheisel led a middling squad into Rice-Eccles Stadium, one that featured consistently average quarterback play by committee, future NFL draft picks such as Datone Jones and Johnathan Franklin and a special teams crisis that turned former soccer manager Tyler Gonzalez into the starting kicker. Anthony Barr still played H-back. The Utes blew away the Bruins 31-6, dropping UCLA’s record to 5-5 and pushing the team out of first place in the Pac-12 South.
The UCLA team returning to Salt Lake City this week is a program transformed. New coach Jim Mora, hired after Neuheisel’s dismissal at the end of the 2011 season, has developed a disciplined team that beat USC, won the Pac-12 South outright and reached the Holiday Bowl. This year’s undefeated squad has soared to 12th in the country and boasts two Heisman contenders in redshirt sophomore quarterback Brett Hundley and Barr, since converted into one of the country’s most feared linebackers.
The Bruins hope Thursday’s game will have little in common with the 2011 contest, and so far they are in luck: There is no snow in the forecast.