CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Standing outside the locker room following his team’s 28-20 win at Virginia, coach Jim Mora watched his players walk in, the expressions on their faces a telling one.
“You would have thought they lost that game just by the expression on our young men’s faces,” he said.
In a game UCLA never trailed, redshirt junior quarterback Brett Hundley still had to take a few minutes after the game to tell himself, ‘Relax, we really did win this one.’
It was a season-opening win that came across the country against an Atlantic Coast Conference team – at a 9 a.m. Pacific start time. Yet, there in the corner of the visitor’s media room after the game sat redshirt senior offensive lineman Malcolm Bunche, his usual enthusiastic demeanor replaced by a murky one as he answered reporters’ questions.
“Our morale is a little bit down right now,” said redshirt senior linebacker Eric Kendricks. “Everyone’s a little upset.”
The No. 7 Bruins expected more – much more – out of themselves Saturday.
As 17-point-plus favorites against the Virginia Cavaliers, they didn’t seem to expect themselves to be clutching so tightly to the game’s outcome so late.
With less than six minutes left, and the game within an arm’s reach at 28-20, Virginia’s offense pushed as far down as to the UCLA 17-yard line. The Cavaliers’ conversion on fourth-and-eight though came up short.
“Nothing will always be perfect but we expect greatness,” Hundley said. “We all expect greatness. That’s what we want to do.”
If greatness is what UCLA expected, it certainly didn’t come from its offense, which, like a sprinkler on its first use, sputtered for much of the game.
Time and time again, Hundley would drop back to pass, only to have defenders rushing towards him, the pocket collapsing soon after. By the game’s end, Virginia had sacked Hundley five times. If not for a few small scrambles here and there, Hundley likely would have sustained more damage.
At times, the fault for such poor pass protection lay with the offense line, where redshirt junior center Jake Brendel – who had started all 27 games with Hundley over the past two seasons – sat out because of a knee injury (MCL sprain). In his place was sophomore Scott Quessenberry.
Neither Quessenberry nor the rest of the line appeared to be in sync, whether it was together or individually. With Virginia blitzing relentlessly, the combination was a disaster in the waiting for UCLA.
At other times, though, it seemed Hundley quite simply couldn’t make the proper reads, rushing his progressions and struggling to maneuver in the pocket.
If the chaos in the backfield wasn’t enough, the Bruins receivers did Hundley little favors, dropping multiple passes. UCLA’s offense scored just seven points.
Yet the scoreboard notched UCLA at 28, the credit for the difference going to the Bruins’ defense.
Between junior cornerback Ishmael Adams, junior safety Randall Goforth and redshirt senior linebacker Eric Kendricks, UCLA took three Virginia turnovers the distance. Adams took a 20-yard interception return, Goforth a 75-yard fumble return and Kendricks a 37-yard interception return, all of which came in a single quarter – the second.
That much would surely be good enough for greatness – for other teams.
“We worked our butt off. I feel like for all the hard work we put in, it didn’t really show today,” Kendricks said. “That (game) was just a little bruise to the ego.”
For all they expected of themselves, a win proved simply not enough.
So outside the locker room, watching his players walk in – their steps a little heavier – Mora seemed, in a way, proud.
“To me, that gives me a good feeling,” he said. “Because I know what their expectations are … and that’s good.”