EL PASO, Texas — For nearly two decades, bowls haven’t been UCLA’s forte.
It’s an easy reputation to earn with performances as ugly as 2011’s Fight Hunger Bowl and last year’s beat down at the hands of Baylor in the Holiday Bowl.
The Bruins came into the 2013 Sun Bowl with a 4-10 record in their last 14 bowl games, dating back to 1993. But UCLA couldn’t let that end-of-season ineptitude continue. Not Tuesday.
In a 42-12 shellacking of Virginia Tech, UCLA notched its best defensive showing in a bowl game since the 1991 John Hancock Bowl. Holding the Virginia Tech Hokies to just 12 points, the Bruins put their own big signature on the Hokie offense and their 2013 season.
The defense went beyond merely suffocating Virginia Tech. More than they had all season, the Bruins hit, intimidated and punished the Hokies.
Senior inside linebacker Jordan Zumwalt, playing his last game in a UCLA uniform, left a mark on the Virginia Tech offense that stung particularly strongly. Early in the second quarter, Virginia Tech redshirt senior quarterback Logan Thomas completed a short pass to redshirt freshman receiver Joshua Stanford and was clobbered just under the chin. The hit earned Zumwalt a 15-yard penalty for a personal foul, but it left Thomas on the sideline for the remainder of the game.
“I was either going to hit them as hard as I can or I was going to miss them,” Zumwalt said. “That was my game plan. So luckily it went really well.”
Zumwalt, who finished with a game-high 10 total tackles and earned co-MVP honors, said the UCLA defense was particularly emotional about not being able to play with redshirt junior inside linebacker Eric Kendricks, who remains out until spring with an ankle injury.
“I love E.K., we all do. He’s a soldier with us. We all talked to him, texted him before the game,” Zumwalt said. “E.K., you all know, is a baller. He plays really hard and really well. We had to step up for him and I feel like we did that.”
Perhaps the defense’s most impactful moment came with around five minutes left in the third quarter. With the Bruins up a touchdown, redshirt senior wide receiver Shaquelle Evans muffed a punt on the UCLA 12, setting the Hokies up with what looked like an easy tap-in to tie the game.
The Bruins made two key tackles and redshirt junior cornerback Anthony Jefferson pitched in with lockdown defense on a third down corner fade route to limit Virginia Tech to a field goal.
“That was huge,” said senior outside linebacker Anthony Barr. “Any time you flip the field like that and they have a short field, you want to get the ball back to the offense and hopefully keep them out of the end zone.”
The goal-line stand effectively took Evans, who later responded with a 59-yard touchdown reception, off the hook, and kicked off a 28-2 scoring landslide to close the game.
“I felt terribly after that. That was the first time I turned the ball over since my junior year of high school,” Evans said. “Stuff happens, but I’m glad we bounced back with the win.”
The next generation
With 13:22 left to play, freshman outside linebacker Myles Jack reached a hand out and coolly collected a deflected pass from Virginia Tech quarterback Mark Leal, returning the ball for a 24-yard touchdown that gave the Bruins a commanding 28-10 lead.
The score was Jack’s first as a defensive player, but more importantly it signaled a changing of the guard in the UCLA linebacker corps. With Zumwalt and Barr moving on from the blue and gold, the Sun Bowl marked a torch-passing for what has been tabbed “Linebacker University,” or “LBU” for short.
It was something that the group even discussed as the clock ticked away on UCLA’s 2013 season.
“We were talking about that with like five minutes left in the game and the offense was on the field,” Jack said. “(Zumwalt) was like, ‘Look, I mean, we’ve just got to continue our legacy as linebackers. We’re building this LBU product and we’ve just got to keep it moving and set the bar higher and higher each year.’”