PASADENA — Earlier this week, Ishmael Adams lucked into a pretty sweet gig.
UCLA’s football coaching staff had been deciding whether to use the sophomore cornerback or Myles Jack, the freshman linebacker/running back hybrid, for a kickoff and punt returner role vacated by the absence of sophomore wide receiver Devin Fuller.
There was no word on who was leading the competition, but sure enough, Adams was finally handed the job.
“(Jack) already had a load on his plate, so he sort of just gave it to me,” Adams said.
On UCLA’s first kick return of Saturday’s 38-33 loss to Arizona State, Adams gave the No. 19 Sun Devils an unexpected kick in the gut. Catching the ball at the goal line, the 5-foot-8 sophomore exploded for a 58-yard dash down the field to set the Bruins up for a 42-yard touchdown strike on the next play.
Taking on a role that had been a distant dream since football playoffs in his senior year of high school, Adams became a nightmare for ASU, ripping off a punt return of 49 yards and another kickoff return of 69 yards in the first half alone. The sophomore appeared to be just a shake away from a touchdown on both occasions.
“It’s a right there, right now decision. You can’t stop, you can’t freeze time. You can’t do anything except keep going forward,” Adams said. “I had a cutback lane on a punt return … but I had a blocker in front of me so I thought I had it. We’re almost there, but it wasn’t enough.”
Adams nearly echoed the sentiments of the offense that, on numerous occasions, failed to pick up where he left off.
Following Adams’ third and final long return and with the clock winding down in the second quarter, the No. 14 Bruins played to a first-and-goal, needing just seven yards to begin hacking away at a 28-10 deficit.
Instead of opening up the playbook to reach the Promised Land matted in powder blue, the Bruins called two run plays down the middle of the field against a loaded Arizona State interior. On third down, redshirt sophomore quarterback Brett Hundley severely overthrew a well-covered Shaquelle Evans in the corner of the end zone, and UCLA was forced to settle for a 23-yard field goal.
“It was a miscommunication,” said the redshirt senior wide receiver, who finished the night with 80 receiving yards and a touchdown. “I had talked to the coaches about how the corners were playing and they didn’t get it to Brett. That’s basically what it was.”
As the game progressed, UCLA points continued to slip off the scoreboard. Trailing 38-33 with less than 10 minutes to play, the Bruins drove to the Sun Devils’ 11 on just four rushes from Hundley and redshirt freshman running back Paul Perkins, opening up the perfect opportunity to pass for an easy score. Instead, UCLA once again lacked innovation, calling on Perkins and Hundley for predictable run plays before surrendering a sack that led to a missed field goal.
The UCLA offense ate up over 60 yards and four and a half minutes of clock, but slunk back to the sideline with nothing to show for its best opportunity to steal the game away.
“There’s a lot of things in this game where you can look back and they’re critical moments in the game, but that’s every game,” Hundley said. “It’s win the down, pretty much.”
Rather than winning the down, the Bruins wasted over 230 total return yards. Failing to get it done with just a few yards to the goal line, UCLA’s loss of its shot at a third-straight Pac-12 title game came down to less than 10.
“We were in it, we had shots,” said coach Jim Mora. “It’s just those what ifs and the could’ve beens, and they don’t matter; we just have to get better from it, and we will.”